


For Each Ecstatic Instant

by ariaadagio



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apocalypse … now-ish?, BDSM, Case Fic, Chloe Decker has a control kink, Cock Cages, Demons, Dissociative Amnesia, Dom Chloe Decker, Dom/sub, Edging, Eventual BDSM relationship, Exploration of Consent Issues, F/M, Femdom, Forced Arousal, Forced Orgasm, Ghosts, Good BDSM Etiquette, Hurt Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Lucifer Morningstar knows all the kinks, Magic, Mind Control, Mutual Pining, Orgasm Control, Orgasm Denial, Post-Season/Series 04, Power Dynamics, Praise Kink, Romance, SEE NOTES FOR ADDITIONAL TRIGGER INFORMATION, Serial Trope Subversion - seriously I give up tagging, Sexual Content, Slavery, Sub Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Supernatural Elements, Urban Fantasy, Worldbuilding, as in super extra not Fifty Shades
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:08:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 55
Words: 269,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25992655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariaadagio/pseuds/ariaadagio
Summary: After a five month absence, an amnesiac Lucifer returns from Hell, mysteriously cursed to fulfill Chloe Decker’s every desire—the first pull from an apocalyptic house of cards. As natural order shows signs of structural collapse, Lucifer and Chloe must discover how to free him from his bonds, and solve the puzzle of his reappearance. Meanwhile, their newest murder investigation draws them deep into an exploration of BDSM. Harbingers, Hell, devilish hijinks, and kinks. What’re a beleaguered Devil and Detective to do?
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 5264
Kudos: 2194





	1. "Exhibit A"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wollfgang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wollfgang/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Heaven for Everyone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560611) by [XWingAce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/XWingAce/pseuds/XWingAce). 



> _For each ecstatic instant  
>  We must an anguish pay  
> In keen and quivering ratio  
> To the ecstasy._
> 
> _For each beloved hour  
>  Sharp pittances of years,  
> Bitter contested farthings  
> And coffers heaped with tears._
> 
> _-Emily Dickinson_
> 
> This story will not be for everybody. Please, note the rating, which is not only for sexual content but blood, gore, and adult themes. Though this narrative contains no rape, there is nonconsensual touching and a couple of nonconsensual kisses. Various consent issues are grappled with at length. I kindly ask if you're at all sensitive to anything I've just described, or anything I listed in the story tags, please read the additional [trigger information](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_gW1vv2hBZPo4hGaPI0hNCei_WK0PMpksvFzstSUWKE/edit?usp=sharing) I've provided (note: includes general spoilers).
> 
> Thank you so much to my tireless beta readers: [Hiromystory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiroMyStory/pseuds/HiroMyStory), [Pellaaearien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pellaaearien), and [Wollfgang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wollfgang). Thanks in particular to Wollfgang, who's been with me through thick and thin on this thing, always cheerleading, always ready to brainstorm and bounce ideas around at all hours of the day and night. Thank you to my pre-readers: Elleflies, [feartheviolas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feartheviolas/pseuds/feartheviolas), [soaring_bean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soaring_bean/pseuds/soaring_bean), and [Venividivictorious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venividivictorious/pseuds/venividivictorious). Thank you to the many lovely people on Tumblr and Twitter who've been cheering me on as I've been working on this this past 14 months. Thanks to [XWingAce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/XWingAce/pseuds/XWingAce), who gave me permission to expand on an idea I read in one of her fabulous fics: Heaven for Everyone. Thanks also to [Liannabob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liannabob/pseuds/Liannabob), for permission to write a brief riff off her hilarious version of Patrick the bartender.
> 
> I created a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4BCGSg4HLWvcPhadFyhywK?si=P979xx5nQFuFTjXh14Iwgw) for this story. Each track is in order by chapter, and there is a song for every chapter.
> 
> As things stand right now, FEEI is approximately 285k words long, 55 chapters, and is a complete first draft, so you don't need to worry about this being abandoned. I'm posting this first chapter now as a contribution to the S5A pre-party. (Yay! It's almost here!!!). I'll resume posting in earnest on August 26. I plan to post two chapters a week, one each on Sunday and Wednesday. If I can manage it, I may post some extra chapters here and there since this is such a long story.
> 
> This story was written in the hiatus between S4 and S5. Any similarities with the upcoming S5 are coincidental—pretty sure I'm about to get Jossed hard, but we shall see.
> 
> Please, feel free to find me and say hi on Tumblr or Twitter as ariaadagio. I love making new fandom friends!
> 
> Without further ado, I sincerely hope you all enjoy this :)

"I don't get it," Maze says. 

"Don't get what?" chirps Ella.

Linda stares into space, anxiously drumming her fingers against the table. 

Maze glares like she's sizing up a kill, a small crease forming between her eyebrows. The game board sprawls across the table, covered in a tangled spaghetti-like clump of tiny blue, black, green, and white game pieces, each shaped like train cars, all strung together to form squiggly lines. She drags a sangria-colored fingernail against the top edges of her cards, flicking them in quick succession.

"I don't get why this is fun," she says.

"Because it's a game," Ella replies, "and games are fun and relaxing?"

"But I can't kill or sabotage anyone." Maze jabs her thumb in Chloe's direction. "She _stole_ my tunnel to Petrograd, and the only solution is to go _around_ her? How is that fun and relaxing? Where's my retribution?" 

"Dude, how is retribution relaxing?" 

"Uh," Maze says, "because I'm a demon?"

Ella laughs. "You're, like, so good at that role! It _never_ breaks."

"Ella," Chloe interjects softly, "it's really not a role."

"And it's _fun_ ," Ella continues, ignoring Chloe _,_ "because now you have to strategize a new route! Which, as a theme right now, I'm liking. Don't let adversity get you down, y'know?" Ella tips her head pointedly at Linda, simultaneously staring at Maze, begging silently. "And we _so_ need a spoonful of that. _Right, Chlo_?"

"Yeah," Chloe agrees on cue. Her chest tightens as her thoughts ricochet unwillingly to … him. She tips back her wineglass and chugs until it's gone. "We really do."

Maze blows out a breath. "But that's—" Something beeps. Shifting, she yanks a phone from somewhere within her bustier—where the thing even fit, Chloe will never freaking know.

"Anything?" Linda says tensely, reanimating.

"Sorry, Linda," Maze replies, slumping as she sets the phone aside again. "Didn't pan out."

Linda nods. "I … shouldn't have gotten my hopes up." Her eyes water as her attention shifts to Charlie, who's sleeping in his bassinet in the corner. "He's gone."

"Hey," Maze says. She dumps her cards onto the table and scoots across the couch to wrap an arm over Linda's shoulder. "Hey, I still have some ideas. Don't give up yet."

"He's _gone_ , Maze," Linda snaps. "If he were on Earth, you would have found him by now!"

Chloe shrinks in her seat, trying not to give into the urge to apologize again, to re-bloody wounds that are still gaping. Silence stretches, filled only by the crackling fire. Their game—Ticket to Ride—lies forgotten on the table amongst a forest of empty wineglasses and an empty bottle with a French label. 

"Maybe," Chloe says softly, "maybe game night was a bad idea."

"No. No way." Ella rockets to her feet, folding her arms. "No _way_ , guys. I get that a lot of stuff's happened. Part of our extended Tribe is gone, and that sucks. It _sucks_. We're all still sad and feeling awful. No arguments. But now's time to pull _together_ , not drift apart."

"Ellen—"

"No!" Ella snaps. "No, I spent all of last year in a dark place, and heck if I'm gonna let you guys fall in and drown, too. No, we're gonna drink some more wine. We're gonna play this stupid game. And we're gonna have some gosh darned fracking _fun_. Okay?" 

"But—" 

" _Okay_?" Ella's bullish insistence shuts up even Maze this time. 

Chloe, Linda, and Maze exchange wincing looks. 

Exhaustion clings to Chloe, deep in every sinew and muscle like the punch of sharp talon through flesh. It permeates her bone marrow, her brain, her soul. Missing Lucifer _hurts_. She wants nothing more than to curl into bed. To sleep. Not that, between her job and her kid, she has the luxury. She swallows against the lump in her throat. A lump that's existed for weeks—months—refusing to go away. 

_It was always you,_ she can hear him say. 

Her eyes prickle, but she rubs her face, sighs, and stands. "I'll get another wine bottle," she says. And she flees toward the kitchen.

* * *

The kitchen doesn't offer solitude, solace, or space, but it does offer a bit of emotional distance. Distance between her and the black hole of despair forming around her coffee table, between all her friends. Hiding her face behind the cabinet door, Chloe takes a deep breath. And another. And another. Trying to compartmentalize herself back into something resembling okay. Like she does for work every morning. Like she does for the days when she has Trixie.

Things have been … hard. To say the least. 

Maze— _Maze!—_ is the only one who seems to be handling the abandonment with a touch of aplomb. Which is worse, in a way. Makes Chloe feel just a touch more inadequate than she already did. And despite the repeated procession of Ella-enforced Tribe nights, every Friday on the dot ….

_See?_ Lucifer had said. _You need me._

Chloe's grip tightens against the countertop, turning her knuckles bloodless. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_ to be agonizing over a man she will _never_ see ag—

A clamorous crash cracks open the silence behind her, shocks her into fight-not-flight. She grabs for the nonexistent gun in her nonexistent hip holster, whirling on her feet. Her toaster oven flies off the counter, the remaining wineglasses hanging from the rack shatter, and her knife block tips over, as a searing, bladed arc of luminescent white displaces them. 

She grapples with the thing attacking her. Her fingertips scrabble against hot, wet skin, forcing the thing back. Away from her and her soft parts.

It stumbles. The white blur framing it fans outward. 

More of her kitchen contents crash to the floor.

A battle cry rips through her throat, but dies, eclipsed by a choked bleat of panic when she realizes. 

Not an it. Not an attacker. 

Him.

Someone in the living room yells—Maze's Hell knife sprouts from one of the cabinets like a weed. Charlie is screaming, fussing.

But Chloe stands frozen. 

Transfixed.

Familiar fathomless eyes and disheveled dark hair take her heart and stab it. And then the chains clink against her floor tiles. Metal flashes in the light, cold and clinical and sharp. The tapestry of black contusions, the lurid smears of red, the slick shine of sweat, all hit her awareness last. 

"Lucifer?" she has a chance to boggle.

He sinks to his knees. "Help," he gasps. " _Please_."

And then his weight sags against her, his beautiful wings unfurled behind him like a spent parachute, his body limp, naked, bloodied, bruised. 

Broken.

She drops to the floor with him. Blood trickles from his nose and ears. From the corners of his eyes and mouth. He splutters and chokes, spraying her shirt with scarlet droplets as she cradles him to her chest. 

"Lucifer?" she repeats, a croak. "What happened? What …?"

But he doesn't answer, only coughs. Another swell of blood gurgles up from his insides and dribbles down his chin. She smears it out of the way, trying to keep his mouth clear. He stares at her like she's his only lifeline after a shipwreck. 

"What the fuck?" Maze says, materializing at his other side. "What the _fuck?"_

"I don't _know_ ," says Chloe. "He just freaking _appeared_!" 

Lucifer shudders in her grasp. She swipes away more blood with her thumb. His fingers paw at her kneecap for purchase, like he thinks he's falling, not realizing he's already on the floor. Metal digs into her thigh as he grasps for her.

Metal. 

From metal cuffs. Wrapped around his wrists. His ankles. From each cuff dangles a chain almost as thick as her wrist. Each chain terminates in gnarled, twisted, broken links. They drag when his limbs move. Like he was a prisoner or something, somewhere bound and captive, until he broke free. Horror is a sinking ship in Chloe's mind, spiraling into a whirling maelstrom. 

"It's okay," she murmurs. Not. Not okay. "It's okay, Lucifer." Not okay at all. "I'm here. You're safe." 

She can't check his pulse at his radial arteries because of the cuffs on his wrists. A thick ring of black bruising encircles his throat. She's afraid to press on the bruises, so she searches for his brachial artery, near the inside of his elbow. He doesn't resist. His skin is fever hot and slippery. His heartbeat is rapid, thready. 

"Should we call 911?" she asks, and then quickly amends herself. "We should call 911."

Maze gives Chloe an are-you- _nuts_ look. "You really wanna call 911 with _those_ lying out?" She gestures at his crumpled wings. "He already broke Ellen. You wanna break the paramedics, too?"

Ella. Shit. 

Ella's clutching the farthest cabinet handle as she gapes, empty-eyed, into the kitchen, at the sprawled fallen angel on the floor. 

"Ella?" Chloe prods gently. " _Ella_?"

Ella offers nothing in reply except a soft, lost, befuddled little, "But." 

"Linda!" Maze belts, and Chloe flinches. "You're a doctor. Make the kid stop crying and come help us with Lucifer."

"I can't magically make a baby stop crying, Maze," Linda snaps back at them. "It doesn't work like that. And when will you get I'm not that kind of doctor? Chloe probably has more trauma-response training than I do." A gentle pat-pat-pat sound breaks through the wall of Charlie's wailing. In a softer voice not directed toward the kitchen, Linda adds, "There, there, baby. It's okay. Shh. Shh. Mommy's here."

Chloe squeezes Lucifer's shoulder, trying not to panic. "Don't worry. Don't worry, Lucifer. We'll help you." Somehow. She peers across his ravaged body to Maze. "Wait, should I leave? I make him vulnerable."

"Never seen him like this," Maze replies. "Even after a bad fight. I don't think this is a human injury."

"What does that mean?"

"Means your presence means jack."

"Oh."

"Lig … ligature marks," Ella mumbles.

"What?" Chloe says.

Ella kneels on the ground beside them. Her fingers tremble as she brushes his neck. "The bruising. On his neck. He's … b-been strangled. He really needs a hospital, Chlo. The swelling might cut off his airway." She laughs like she's just made a fantastic joke. Like she's halfway to hysterical. "Do angels even need air? They existed before air was a thing, didn't they?" She adds in the barest squeak to Maze, "Oh, my _God_ , you're _really_ a demon? God is …? God … is?" 

"Yup," says Maze. "Pretty much."

"But—"

His muscles all contract at once, forcing a rough, guttural sound through his vocal cords that turns into keening—an ictal scream. His eyes roll back, his neck stiffens, and his head bangs against the crook of her elbow hard enough to bruise. Then his fists close and drop to his waistline, he spasms onto his side, and his whole body jerks and twists and pitches in place. 

Maze drags Chloe and Ella out of the kitchen. Just in time for Lucifer's thrashing to knock the magnets from the fridge. To dent the stove door. To smash a chair to splinters. Blood smears across her broken floor. It's on her shirt. It's everywhere. 

Chloe tries to shake Maze's hold, but the demon's grip is a hurting vise. 

"Decker, he isn't _safe_ ," Maze says, almost a hiss. 

"But he's—"

"—going to _kill_ you if he hits you. You wanna help him? Start by not dying." As if to prove Maze's point, his bladed feathers strike the floor around him, pulverizing tiles into finer rubble with each impact.

"What's wrong with him?" Ella asks.

"Maybe the fever?" Chloe says. "Or …?" A brain injury of some kind. But … no. _No_.

His convulsing sharpens like a snapping whip. He knocks her refrigerator into the backsplash—the slam of the impact reverberates in her chest. A cabinet door crashes down, barely missing his head. 

She takes an instinctive step to the right, only for Maze to block her escape. 

"Let me go!" Chloe demands, clawing at Maze's fingers. "Me being here just means he'll get crushed if my refrigerator falls on him, yeah?"

Maze releases her grip.

Chloe stumbles for the front door, Ella scrambling after.

And then the divine flashbang grenade explodes in their faces, stunning Chloe into exquisite non-function. She slams her eyes shut before her retinas bake to embers. Everything is white and stark and filled with sparkles, brilliant like the setting sun through rustling leaves, even behind the shield of her eyelids. 

"Oh, my _God_!" Linda squawks as the baby shrieks. 

"Linda!" Maze shouts.

A snapping sound carries from the living room. The low-pitched roar of the sliding door opening. Stomping footsteps recede onto the patio with the wailing baby. An egress. Two, as Maze thunders after them.

Half-blinded, Chloe ducks behind the stairway, pulling a stupefied Ella with her as the contact paper in the busted cabinet scorches and curls, and the fruit perched on the countertops shrivels like prunes. 

Lucifer. 

Still thrashing from the seizure, he brightens. He _burns_. Like a rising star. Like the Lightbringer. Like he's building a goddamned sun in her kitchen. 

The acrid stench of smoke burgeons in her nostrils. She coughs. They need to get out, somehow, before the apartment goes up in flames, but a wall of cleansing, searing light separates them from escape. Her smoke detector chirps an angry warning, only for a wayward primary feather to skewer it and smack it off the ceiling. Plastic pieces and fried batteries rain to the floor. 

"Chloe!" Ella says, a bare gasp. "Chloe, your necklace." 

Chloe yelps as heat wreathes her neck. The necklace chain burns her fingertips, but it snaps apart with one adrenaline-aided tug. She tosses the hot, glowing trinket across the hall, where it skitters to a stop by the front door and chars the paint. 

And then the light winks out as quickly as it mushroomed into something nuclear. The thuds, thumps, and thwacks of Lucifer's seizing fill the quiet, along with Linda's frantic shushing of the baby. The minutes seem to drag into eternity, until, at last, all hint of movement subsides, leaving only wreck and ruin. 

Lucifer. Her apartment. Everything. 

A charred piece of Trixie's artwork flutters past Chloe's shoulder. 

"This is … _so_ …." Ella blinks. And blinks again. "Dude … an angel almost blew up your _kitchen_." 

"Everybody good?" Maze shouts from the patio.

"Define good. Like on a scale from zero to oh-my-God-I've-been-to-a-nudist-colony-with-Satan-and-God-was- _literally_ -watching."

"Lucifer," Chloe gasps. 

She scrambles back into the kitchen where he's sprawled. His eyelids droop to half-mast. The air around him radiates with heat to the point she expects it to quiver like a desert mirage, though it doesn't. Sweat pearls across his forehead and neck and meanders down his torso.

"Can we force his wings back in?" Chloe asks as she pushes him onto his side, into recovery position. His wings make him unwieldy. His thigh is limp and heavy and sweat-slick when she grips behind it to prop his knee forward. The chains hanging from his limbs drag across her shattered tiles. "Into … wherever they go? So we can call an ambulance?" 

"They're metaphysical," Maze says, stepping off the patio. Her metal-tipped stiletto boots clack against the singed hardwood. "He has to will them away, same as he has to will them into reality."

"And he can't do that when he isn't conscious."

"Nope."

Except … he is conscious. He is. Sort of. She pulls her fingers through his sweaty hair, trying to ignore the crust of blood ringing the corners of his mouth, forming tacky tear tracks and snot trails down his cheeks and under his nose, caking his sideburns near his ears. Literally, every orifice on his face is bleeding. Was bleeding, anyway. Like whatever's inside his skull got turned to oatmeal. Between that and the tonic-clonic seizure, the brain-damage idea seems … scarier. More real. A cold, worrisome certainty burrowing deep into her gut like a parasite to feed.

"Lucifer?" she whispers. "Lucifer, can you hear me? It's me. It's Chloe."

His eyes are fever bright and empty. He doesn't reply. Normal for right after a seizure, but— 

_Help. Please._ His desperation—his fear—scalds her mind's eye. 

"I'm here," she tells him softly. "I'm here, and you're home. On Earth. You're safe. I promise."

The chains clink. "I think I can pick these locks," says Ella, inspecting his wrists. The skin underneath the cuffs is bruised almost black. Abraded. Just like his throat. "Do you have a kit? Or some paperclips?"

"In the desk in the living room." Chloe's voice sounds thick, even to her own ears. Low-pitched. She's close to falling apart. "Some paperclips. With Trixie's school supplies."

Ella gives Chloe a long, troubled look. "He … wasn't in England doing a play. Was he."

"Nah!" Maze says, slapping Ella on the back. "But, hey, at least the clue bat finally landed a blow."

Ella rubs her shoulder. "And … and Amenadiel?"

Chloe's eyes burn, threatening to overwhelm her despite the severity of the situation. 

"Right. Right." Ella nods a bit like she's having a seizure of her own. "Of course you're right. More important stuff going on. I'll get the paperclips." 

Clutching Lucifer, Chloe glances at her demolished refrigerator. Freezer mist curls lazily into the dry air. A package of frozen peas dangles from the yawning freezer door, half in, half out, thawing bits of frost dripping to the floor. Like a message from God: ready-made ice pack here! 

Who knows? Maybe it _is_ a message, given the circumstances. 

She lingers one last moment, her palm resting against his collarbone. 

He blinks, awake, but not awake. 

"It's okay," she says again, a soft, soothing whisper.

Though it isn't okay. Not even a little. And she suspects it won't be for a while to come. 

* * *

They sit him up, his back cradled to Chloe's front, her thighs propping up his armpits and her body sandwiched between him and the dishwasher. His left wing bows against the counter and his right sprawls across the floor, out into the hallway. She ices his throat with the melting peas while Ella works on the locks and Linda wipes him down with cool rags. 

But that's the limit of the first aid they can provide him. An ice pack and some TLC. That's it. How pathetic. 

"Lucifer, can you hear me?" Chloe urges, patting him on the shoulder. His skin radiates, and her insides twist with nausea when her words again garner no response. Nothing more than a cloudy-eyed blink. "Lucifer."

Nothing.

"He really needs a doctor," she worries once again. "He needs like … a head scan, or whatever they do."

"Chloe," Linda says gently, "there's a lot of different things that cause seizures other than head injuries, and we don't even know a human doctor could help. Maze said this isn't a human injury."

"But at least we'd be _trying_ if we took him to the ER."

"We're trying now," Linda replies, her words too reasonable. "Ella is working on the locks. You're keeping the swelling down. I'm focused on the fever. Let's just keep doing what we can, okay?" 

"Okay," Chloe says quickly, her lungs shuddering. "Okay."

Linda takes a slow breath and blows it out, gesturing toward her chest with the wet rag as she gives Chloe a pointed look. Chloe forces herself to imitate. The pause helps smash her snowballing panic that he's going to die on her kitchen floor at any moment. After three faux-calm shared breaths, Linda resumes working on Lucifer. Her rag rasps against his wet skin in the quiet, accompanied by the quieter metallic click-click-clack-click sounds of Ella working with the paperclips.

Chloe strokes his hair. "I wonder what happened to him."

"Hopefully, he'll be able to tell us, soon," Linda says. 

But the longer Chloe has a chance to think about this situation, the worse the picture in her mind's eye becomes. The chains. His injuries. His nipples are pierced. His genitals. Healing wispy wounds form striations along his skin—his chest, his abdomen, his thighs, his arms—like the fading memory of a whip. A jagged pucker of flesh haunts the space just under the curve of his ribcage, as if he'd been stabbed in the lung. 

"Oh," Linda mutters, horrified, as she wipes away some of the blood that's dribbled down his side to his groin. The flesh about halfway between his navel and his hipbone, in an area about the size of a sand dollar, is raised and angry, the foreign pattern like calligraphy. "What is this, a _brand_?"

"It's demonic," Maze says, looking suddenly uncomfortable as she cradles a sleeping Charlie against her chest.

Chloe frowns. "Like … writing?"

"Kinda."

"Well, what's it say?" Linda asks.

"It's hard to translate."

"Try."

"It's … um." Maze shuffles her feet. "I'm not sure he'd want me to tell you."

"Maze …."

"What?" Maze replies gruffly. The baby stirs, and she adjusts her tone, speaking through a half-smiled grimace as she adds, "Isn't it fucking obvious what happened? He's been _subjugated."_

"Wait," Chloe says. "Wait, wait. Are you saying demons …? They hurt him?"

"That's what it looks like to me."

"But I thought he went to _rule_. That's why he left me. That was the whole point. To keep them in line. He's … he's their king." Isn't he?

"Your guess is as good as mine, Decker." Charlie fusses again at the noise, and Maze adds, "Chill, will you?" 

"Maze—"

"Look," she whispers sharply, rocking the baby a little, "you think flimsy chains like that could hold the Lightbringer if he wanted out?"

"Uh," Ella says, stopping to pick up the busted end of the nearest chain. "Clearly not." She drops the inches-thick metal links back to the ground, where they impact with a reverberating thunk. "And these really don't seem that flimsy."

" _Clearly_ ," Maze says, "they held him long _enough_."

"Maybe," Chloe muses desperately, "it was a game that got out of control?" His vast array of tastes and proclivities had always been a source of awe for her. "Maybe he got bored, and—" 

"No. This is not what he looks like after he _plays_." 

Chloe cringes, silenced, cowed. The melting peas crackle as she shifts the plastic package to a different spot. Freshly formed condensation drips off the bag and spills down Lucifer's chest. He's limp in her arms. Unresponsive. He'd begged her for help. Of course this isn't a game. But hope does funny things to logic.

Subjugated. A horrifying word. 

With a disgusted sigh, Maze heads back down the hallway toward the sliding door, bouncing the baby gently on her hip as she goes.

Chloe tightens her grip around Lucifer, pressing her nose into the wet hair at the nape of his neck. "It's okay," she whispers. "I promise, I've got you. _We've_ got you. You're safe."

Morose silence fills the room like a pall.

Ella sits motionless, the paperclips forgotten in her lax grip. Her eyes are wet, her mascara smudged, as she stares at one of the primary feathers jammed against the hip of her jeans. The feather is long and bowed like a scimitar. Ella's belt loop traps the tip, separating the shining filaments that form the bladed edge. Indoors, close up, unmoving, the sight makes Chloe's breath catch. She … never got to see before. Not like this. And Ella's even worse off, absorbing a sight no human was meant to see, less than an hour after learning angels are a real thing. 

"Doing okay?" Chloe murmurs. "I know this is a lot." 

Ella seems like she might stroke the feather away, but she doesn't. Instead, she shifts her body like she's extricating herself from the clutches of a cactus. "Kind of a crash course. Huh. _Literally._ " 

"Yeah," Chloe says, smiling. "Definitely."

"He's … really the King of Hell?"

Chloe nods. "But he's not evil. He _punishes_ evil."

Ella sniffs again and wipes her face. "Oh, I know that."

"You … do?"

A soft chuckle barks from Ella's lips. "Kinda hard to think of a guy who willingly listens to me drone about science for hours on end as evil. Y'know? It's just …."

"A lot?" 

"A _lot_!" Ella agrees. "I mean, holy shirtballs, Batman! I've gone from being in a weird-ish place of still-a-little-shaky faith to picking the locks on Satan's maybe-slave cuffs"—she glares at the ceiling, waving a paperclip at it like a sword—"with a small side of, 'What the _hell_ , dude. _Really_?' mixed in."

"Sounds about normal for a Friday in this crowd," Linda interjects sympathetically.

"We should start a club," Ella says.

"I'm in," calls Maze from living room.

Chloe smiles faintly, shifting the ice pack again. "Sure."

"Swee—oh!" Ella leans forward, eyes widening. "Lucifer? You with us, buddy?" Her gaze ticks to Chloe. "He's looking at me. I swear." Her focus shifts back to Lucifer, and she beams, waving animatedly at him. "Hey! Hey, buddy! How are you feeling?" 

Though he doesn't reply, Chloe's stomach swoops. Cheek to cheek with him, she can't see more than the movement of his eyelashes as he looks around. She rubs his bicep encouragingly, snaking her fingers down to his arm and picking up his wrist before gripping his limp palm. "Lucifer, it's me. It's Chloe. Can you squeeze my hand?"

The ice pack crackles, shifting, and his torso jerks as his ribs press inward. 

"No, don't try to talk," she tells him, and he quiets. "Rest your throat." She strokes his thumb. His palm. His life lines. "Can you squeeze my hand?"

"Y … Yes," he rasps, though he doesn't squeeze her hand.

"Hey," she warbles as her eyes prick with tears. "Hey, Lucifer."

"Hello … D … Detective."

She laughs as she catches the ice pack from falling. "Stop trying to talk!" she insists, though his famous words of greeting are like a balm. She nuzzles him, her immediate concerns sloughing away that his brain is fried over easy. "Do you think you could put your wings away?"

"Yes."

But he doesn't.

Her sigh is a sharp, audible huff that makes him flinch. 

"Sorry," she rushes to say. "Sorry. I'm just …." Still worried sick. "I'm just …." She clutches the ice pack. Chill soaks into her palm as she resettles it once again against his throat. "If you could just … if you could put your wings away …."

This time, he says nothing at all. Her attention shifts to the massive, shining angel wings sprawled across her kitchen floor. But nothing happens. They don't even twitch. 

"Lucifer."

His body is starting to tremble. "… Yes?" 

The memory of him thrashing on her floor, bleeding, witless, burns her mind's eye. "Just rest. You're safe. I promise. I'm here."

He seems to listen this time. His shaking eases. 

"Welcome home," she whispers. 

* * *

He's definitely addled. 

No matter how many times she tells him not to talk, he tries to croak an answer at her if she phrases something like a question—perhaps he's listening more to her tone of voice than anything else—so she shifts her interactions with him to short statements. By the time Ella is picking the locks on his ankle cuffs, he's responding appropriately to simple things like, "Squeeze my hand," and, "Blink," and, "Look at me." 

With, "Swallow this," Chloe even manages to ply him with an adult-sized dose of liquid Tylenol from the bottle she keeps for Trixie. Something to force the fever down and help with the pain. 

"Rest," she murmurs at him again, and he closes his eyes.

"They're metal," Maze says, frowning, when she picks up one of the chains that had bound his wrist. The chain rumbles as it slides across the demolished floor tiles. "They're just … metal."

"So?" says Ella.

"So, these really shouldn't have been able to hold him."

"But they didn't hold him. Exhibit A: Lucifer is here."

"But they _did_ hold him," Maze counters, gesturing at the black marks on his sallow skin. "Exhibit B: What the fuck did you call them?"

"Ligature marks."

"Yeah, those." 

There's a hollow metal "clank" sound, and the final cuff pops open. 

"Boo yah!" cheers Ella, yanking the awful thing away from his left ankle and tossing it to the side. She gathers her fists and dances in place, revolving her arms and shoulders like the coupling rods on steam engine wheels. "Who's the best forensic scientist in town? Her name is Ella, favorite color yell-uh! She res-cued Satan, and they say she's really great, and—"

"I need someone to stab," says Maze.

"And you make way more sense now!" Ella says, still gyrating. 

"Gee, that's great."

"I know, right?" 

* * *

Lucifer is able to walk under his own power when Chloe prods him. Though he's wobbly, she'll take him being wobbly over having to drag him around wrapped in a sheet like a dead body. When he reaches her bed, and she tells him again to rest, he collapses like he ran a marathon, not climbed some steps, but at least he climbed. At least he walked. At least he got up. Three more things than she would have expected from him before. 

"I think letting him sleep is gonna be the best thing we can do right now," Linda whispers as they clump in the hall outside Chloe's bedroom. "We just need to check on him periodically to make sure he's rousable and not in distress."

"Or going nuclear again," Ella quips.

"Or that."

The light from the hallway casts an elongated white rectangle across the bed, illuminating his outline. As he succumbs to sleep, his wings span the room, going limp by degrees. 

"If there's still no improvement tomorrow," Linda continues, "we can reassess." 

"Look at you, Ms. Not-a-Doctor," Maze snarks.

"Okay, maybe I remember _some_ things," Linda admits. 

"So, what's the plan?" Ella asks. "Are we taking shifts?"

"Oh, I can't," replies Linda in a regretful tone. "I have to get home with Charlie. I didn't bring enough gear along for—"

"Go," Chloe says. "Take care of your baby. I'll be okay." She looks back at the bedroom. "I want some time alone with him anyway. I … I need …." The silvery outline of his wings fills her with a cold, visceral ache, a memory in the shape of his balcony. A kiss. She half expects him to blink out of reality before her eyes again, but— 

"You're sure?" Ella asks, pressing closer. 

Chloe drags her attention back to the group. "Hmm?"

"You're sure you don't need us to stay?"

"Yeah, I really want some time." Chloe hadn't gotten any _time_ before.

"So, we'll come back tomorrow?" Maze says.

"I'll bring the donuts!" adds Ella. "And thoughts! I might have thoughts by then."

"I'm good for the coffee," says Linda.

And thus, the plan is struck.

* * *

Chloe shouldn't sleep in the bed with him.

Logically, she knows it. Her singed, wrecked kitchen is proof enough. He's a living molotov cocktail, _literally,_ and they have no idea what lights his fuse—a head injury? The fever? Or perhaps nuking his surroundings is just something he does when he's terrified and can't defend himself another way. There's no way to know when he's too sick to tell her. 

But ….

But at the same time—emotionally—she can't make herself care.

She thought he would never come back, but now he's here, he's _hurt_ , and she's missed him. 

His absence has been the visceral ache of a phantom limb.

The comfort of having him—solid, breathing, _living_ —beside her overwhelms common sense.

Pushing glowing angel feathers out of the way to climb into bed is, puns aside, a hell of a thing. His down is softer, warmer, lighter than she could have imagined. Like clouds and bunnies and sunshine rolled into one or … human words might be inadequate, really. As her fingers brush plumage, a brief zing of buoyancy twists her lips into a smile before she can stop herself. Her subsequent giggle almost makes her float. But then his lack of reaction to being moved sinks in—the feverish press of heat radiating off his more human anatomy—and she sobers in moments. 

Wings aside, he doesn't appear divine in repose, or even graceful. His hair is a disheveled wreck, his stubble is a haggard swath, his nose is smooshed like a pig's into the pillow, and his lips are parted, probably the precursor to an angelic puddle of drool in the morning. He's definitely going to wake up with face creases. 

Over the minutes, the wing she shoved aside drifts back into place, draping over her. His feathers are warm and dry and smell of fresh down. She sets a timer for ninety minutes and closes her eyes as the thick, slightly wheezy sound of his breathing lulls her.

"I really hope you're okay," she whispers in the darkness.

Of course, he doesn't answer. 

But she can dream.


	2. "Some kind of spell?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early gift, since I plan to post an extra chapter on Thursday this week :) Thank you so much everybody for the outpouring of feedback and encouragement—I've adored each and every bit!

The last ninety minutes between darkness and daylight pass fitfully. "No. No … Lucifer!" She jerks out of troubled dreams, smacking right into a wall—a weight, pressed against her nose and mouth, smothering her. She claws at it, coughing, spitting out bits and flotsam. 

The wall yanks out of reach. 

She gasps for breath, her waking brain cells slowly catching up with reality. The wall, hovering, now, several feet above her, is not a wall. It's a wing. A big white angel wing, drifting overhead like a strange, feathered canopy.

"Sorry!" she says. "Sorry, I wasn't awake yet. I didn't mean to be rough with them."

Silence fills the space between them, stretching like taffy. 

"Lucifer, are you awake?" she whispers when he doesn't reply. 

The sheets rustle like he's scraping his fingernails against the pillowcase. 

"Lucifer?"

"… Yes," he admits, sounding almost … strangled? 

"Did I hurt you?" 

His breathing tightens to wheezing. "Of course not."

Yeah, right.

She hopes she didn't just do the angelic equivalent of kicking him in the balls. But then a more serious worry occurs to her, and she rolls toward him. His face is turned away from her, his body a pale line of skin in the dawning light. His breaths are short and hitching, like he's in pain. 

"Hey." She grabs his opposite shoulder and pulls, only to realize when he grunts that his extended wing isn't going to let him tip that way. Releasing him, she darts out of bed and dashes around the foot of the mattress. "Lucifer, hey." 

He's staring at the opposite window, his eyes wide.

"Hey, you okay?" She waves, trying to get him to focus, but all he does is grimace. "Can you breathe? Is it your throat?" The bruises wrapped around his neck and wrists have already faded from black to splotched yellow and purple, but— 

"Hello," he answers like she's holding him at gunpoint, and he's terrified she'll fire. "Yes. Y-yes. No." 

"No? No to _which_?" 

"No. It's … not my throat." 

"What hurts?"

"Nothing."

"What's wrong then?" 

" _Nothing_ ," he repeats, straining. 

A lie. 

He's _lying_ to her. 

His limbs start to shake like he's stuck in a meat freezer, not her balmy bedroom. Something is wrong. Something is _wrong_. "Okay, that's it," she says. "Put your wings away."

The tendons in his neck bulge. A harrowing, squelched, awful little gasp follows. Then his shoulders twitch, and his wings withdraw in a gusting whoosh that sends her morning bedhead flying back from her face. His expression is sheer panic.

"I'm taking you to the hospital," she says. Like they should have fucking done last _night_. She grabs his trembling hand. "Can you walk?"

"… Yes."

But he doesn't move. He just keeps _looking_ at her. Like his whole world is imploding. 

"Lucifer, come on. We're going to the hospital. Get up!" She tugs on him, and he spills out of bed like an invisible force pushed him upright. 

The sheets fall away from his body, revealing his morning erection—the only bit of him that seems happy—and his healing bruises. He sucks in a breath, his shock subsumed by something … darker. Something terrible and accusatory and hating. Blush creeps across his cheeks. Down his neck. Over his bare chest. But still, he doesn't move. And he doesn't speak. He just stands there. Trembling.

Klaxons scream in her mind. Something is wrong. Something is _wrong_. 

"Lucifer, talk to me."

His fingers clench. And then he says in a perfectly reasonable tone, belied only by the frothing clouds in his eyes, "What shall I talk about, Detective?" 

"I wanna know what's wrong."

"Nothing."

" _Bullshit_ , nothing's wrong. Are you _kidding_ me?"

"No, Detective," he's quick to assure her, the words reedy and quiet. He averts his gaze to a fixed point near her big toe. "Apologies, Detective."

She can only gape at him. 

The silence burgeons like a balloon, but he makes no attempt to pop it. Or move. Or look at her. 

What. The fuck.

"Are you sick or not?" she asks.

"No, Detective." 

"Then …?"

But he offers her nothing. _Nothing_. Not one little word of reassurance or explanation.

"Lucifer, I'm … really confused."

A soft, disconsolate moan coils in his throat. He seems like he might actually _cry_. 

"Hey, it's okay," she assures him, not sure what the hell else to say.

He sags, exhaling shakily, his crumpled expression a wasteland of misery.

And then her empty stomach chooses now to rumble, loudly enough to serve as a placeholder for the unspoken tumble of invectives cascading through her brain. He flinches forward like something cracked him with a whip. Then he scuttles buck naked out of the room.

"Where are you going?" she says.

"To your kitchen," he calls over his shoulder.

"But my kitchen is rubble."

He doesn't reply, and the sound of his heavy footsteps fleeing down the stairs leaves her gaping. 

What. The fuck.

* * *

He's already perched a paper bag full of pancake mix on the ruined counter when she descends the steps, a pair of Dan's old sweatpants clutched between her hurting fingers. He glances in her direction as she approaches the counter, his expression is still unreadable beyond the fact it's very, _very_ wrong, but returns to his work without speaking.

"Okay, seriously," she says as he sniffs at a milk carton, "what the hell is going on? And"—she foists the sweatpants at him like a shield—"and put some freaking clothes on."

"I'm making you breakfast," he says, setting down the milk to take the sweatpants. He slides them on without complaint, cinching the waistband high over his hips like he's trying to cover as much skin as possible. Even the Devil can't pull off a Steve Urkel, though, and if it weren't for the foreboding sense of wrongness permeating everything, she might smile. He pulls the largest mixing bowl loose from the stack in the closest cabinet. 

"Lucifer, what are you _doing_?" she demands.

"I'm making you _breakfast_ ," he repeats with a strident edge to his words. He pours the pancake mix and the milk into the bowl. 

"Why?"

"Because you're hungry."

"That's your takeaway from this discussion? That I'm _hungry_?"

"Yes," he replies. What goes up must come down, the sky is blue, and the Detective must be fed if she's hungry. 

"I don't want breakfast right now," she says slowly, and he drops the spoon like it burned him. Her hands start to shake as badly as his are. A cold pit forms in her stomach. "Lucifer, please, _please,_ tell me what's going on."

"What's going on." 

"No, I"—her frustration overflows—"Lucifer, would you just say something freaking _useful_?"

"Something. Freaking. Useful," he enunciates, staring at her. Like he's trying to send her some kind of message. Begging her to receive it, even. _Well, Detective, what does this tell you?_

But …?

"Wait. Wait." Horror roils her gut when she realizes Lucifer is, indeed, waiting like a coiled spring. "Do you …?" No. No, no, _no_. No way. "Lucifer, I …." She reviews the morning from the moment she'd woken up with a face full of feathers until now. "But." Reviews what she's said and done. What _he's_ said and done. Suspiciously, she grits out, "Stand on one foot …."

He shifts his hips and lifts his left leg like a crane.

A cold wave knocks what little is left of her composure out to sea. "Put your freaking foot down," she says, and he does. 

She claps her hands over her mouth. "You really have to do what I say?" 

His eyes close briefly like he hurts. "So it would seem." 

" _Anything_ I say?"

"So it would _seem_ ," he repeats with an edge.

What the fuck. What the fuck. What the _fuck_. "Well, stop doing what I say!"

His forearm bumps the spoon handle, and the spoon flies off the edge of the bowl, splattering half-mixed batter across the kitchen. He grabs at the granite counter like it's the only thing keeping him upright. Cracks snake into the rock from the epicenter of his grip, before he sinks to the floor beside the cabinet. 

"What's wrong?" she asks.

" _Nothing_ ," he gasps, the word strangled.

"Um, no. _N_ o. Something is _clearly_ wrong, Lucifer! _"_

His ribs compress, and his torso arches backward unnaturally. A deep, upset groan twists in his throat, but before she can worry if he's having another seizure, he collapses onto all fours like he intends to crawl to her feet and kiss them. His palms wander uselessly across the floor like he's reaching for something and isn't finding it. 

"What the hell?" she asks.

"I can't," he gasps out. And then he drops almost flat to the ground with a low-pitched, awful moan. "I _can't_."

"Can't _what_?"

"What you"—he shudders—"ask of"—fights another war with himself—"me."

What she asked of him. What had she asked of him? He gets punished for—oh, fuck—a command to stop following commands. Fuck, fuck, fuck. "I mean, never mind!" she blurts. "I was kidding before. Nothing is wrong. Obviously. Of course you have to do what I say."

His shaking limbs give way, and he sinks into a child's pose against the floor, his breathing easing into long wet drags of air as he struggles to recuperate. 

"Oh, thank God," she says, nauseated. "I'm so sorry." He doesn't lift his head. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

He says nothing. 

"Is this some," she asks, "some Hell thing?" 

"I've no idea," he grits out.

"Some kind of spell?" 

"I've no idea." The word "idea" cuts off with a rasp. He shifts in place, his hips thrusting a little. 

"Are spells even a thing?"

"Yes."

"Could this be a compulsion? Like … like OCD?" Can OCD even manifest out of nowhere? After literal more-than-eons?

"I've no"—he groans—"idea."

"How in the hell is this possible?"

"I don't bloody _know_." He can't stop twitching at this point. Back and forth like he's trying to rut with the floor.

Dots connect in a lurid picture. He gets punished for not complying. "It's okay," she assures him. "It's okay if you don't know the answers to my questions."

He relaxes with a tired whimper, remaining on the dirty, destroyed floor, face down, body splayed, prostrate at her feet. A supplicant come to her altar to pray. 

"Why aren't you getting up?" she asks softly.

"Because," he tells the floor in a dark, upset tone, "I _can't_."

"Why can't you?"

"I've no idea."

"Like"—she flounders—"like you're trying, but nothing is happening?"

"I've no idea how to explain."

"That's okay. But … try."

"I … I-I …." He tenses all over again, and he spits out a bitter, broken, quiet, "Please," before pressing his forehead against the floor by her bare foot, his body almost undulating in his effort to crumple closer to her. " _Please_."

"I mean, don't try!" she amends. 

He sags by her foot, close but not touching as he struggles to catch his breath. 

"Literally," she grits out, "everythingI ask you is a command to respond?" 

"Yes."

"And you can't do _anything_ without my say?" 

"So it would seem."

"But," she protests, "I don't want to make you do things."

He rocks forward. Backward. Forward. Backward. Like there's an itch he can't scratch and can't escape and his only option is to writhe and twist and flail and accomplish nothing. His whole body shakes with strain.

"I'm s-sorry. I'm so sorry." She hiccups, her heart clenching to the point of pain, and she can't breathe. She can't _breathe_. "I _love_ to make you do things. It's my favorite." When he relaxes again, she feels fucking sick. His sweaty hair brushes against her calf, though he doesn't touch her skin to skin. She will not panic. She will _not_ panic. There has to be a way to fix this. This. Whatever _this_ is. 

"I want you to be able to ignore my questions," she tries.

He's so exhausted at this point he can only offer a strangled cry of protest.

"Forget I said that!" He slumps, blinking, dazed. Shit. Shit, shit. Wait. "Remember I said it, just … I-I-I didn't mean it. I don't want you to ignore me." 

She doesn't want to ask him another question, but how the hell are they going to figure this out if he won't—can't?—otherwise speak to her …? Don't panic. Don't— "I don't know what to do," she laments. "I don't … I don't know what to do."

Another cry.

"I mean, disregard that!" 

He goes limp like she cut his strings. 

"Why the hell did _that_ hurt you?" she asks.

"It didn't hurt," he replies faintly. God, he sounds awful.

"Look, whatever it did, whatever you want to call it, why did it happen?"

"You were confused, and I needed to fix it." 

A loathsome thought occurs to her. "Lucifer, does this thing make you lie to me?"

His eyes squeeze shut. "No."

A lie. He's lying again. Right to her face. And he's not any good at it. "You really like doing what I say, don't you?" she tests out.

"Yes."

Fuck.

Which means all of his responses regarding his wellbeing are suspect. And all of his blatant fibs over the past however many minutes stick out like agonizing hangnails. "I don't want you to lie to me unless you want—" Fuck. No. That won't work. And commanding him never to lie to her would be just as heinous as what this compulsion is already doing to him. "Never mind."

She clenches her fists. 

The seconds stretch.

And he just rests with his forehead hovering over her fucking foot like he enjoys smelling the creases between her toes or something. His choppy, labored breathing—almost quiet sobbing—shreds her composure. Her lower lip trembles. She can't just … just _leave_ him there. On the floor. Subservient. She can't. 

"You can get up if you want," she hedges, trying not to force him.

But he still doesn't move. Doesn't speak.

"Do you not want to get up?"

"What I desire seems to be irrelevant," he seethes, " _Detective_."

"Well, I want it to be relevant!" 

He chokes on another heart-wrenching, agonized moan, his muscles bulging as he cowers at her feet. 

"I mean … I mean, that's not true," she says. "I lied. I … I …." Fuck. "Please, get up."

He lifts his head, lurching to his feet. His eyes are bloodshot. Tears blotch his face, and his blushing skin is the bright, intense shade of a stoplight. Like he's mortified. Of course he's mortified. 

"Was this happening last night?" she asks.

"Of course not," he scoffs, the words a tired, croaky rasp.

Suspicion sinks in deeper claws. "Lucifer, do you even remember last night?"

"Yes."

"What do you think happened last night?"

"We kissed," he says. "I said goodbye."

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. "Lucifer, that wasn'tlast night. That was _months_ ago." At his blank, disbelieving look, she rushes to grab her iPad off the couch in the living room. It isn't melted after Lucifer's lightshow, at least. She flicks on the screen. "See?"

"Yes."

"No, I mean see the date."

His attention shifts to the screen, distress opening up his expression like a scalpel. 

And then she realizes how this would look to him. Waking up in her bed, naked, not sure how he got there, trapped by some kind of mystical compulsion, after she'd begged him—pleaded with him—not to leave. After she'd tried to slip something into his drink, only months before.

"Lucifer, I didn't do this. I didn't do this to you. I would _never_ do something like this. Not to you. Not to _anyone._ Please, please, you have to believe me." 

Warmth returns to his gaze. 

"I mean, I misspoke. You don't have to believe me. I want you to think for yourself, but—" She clamps her mouth shut, horrified when his expression frosts over immediately, his upset blossoming again. She could literally command him what to feel and who to be. She could strip him of his personhood with a poor word choice on her part. And if he didn't realize that before, he just figured it out. "Oh, God."

He's silent, his eyes darting frantically back to the iPad clutched in her hands. 

"Here, take it," she offers, pushing it in his direction.

He wraps his fingers around the edges, his touch gentle, like he's been given a precious egg to hold, though he doesn't interact with it at all. Doesn't press the home button or touch the screen. 

"The passcode is 1204," she babbles. "Trixie's birthday. Not very secure, I know, but—" Her headspace becomes one long shrill whine when he still takes no initiative. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. "I mean, I want you to use it now, please."

She watches in silence as he navigates to time.gov. Like he thought she'd engineered the local appearance of the date on the device. When the website confirms what she's told him—that the day he thinks was yesterday was, in reality, five-ish months ago—he doesn't seem to react. Then she realizes the iPad is shaking. 

"Can you even speak if I don't specifically command you to?" she asks.

"I was"—he clears his throat, the sound rough and overwrought—"able to respond to a greeting."

"So, direct addresses, too. A clear desire to interact with you." Like he's by definition nothing until she acknowledges him. 

He stares helplessly into space. 

Disgust washes through her when she thinks of herself blithely forcing him to swallow the Tylenol. To walk. To rest. Peppering him with questions he had to answer. Touching him. _Kissing_ him. "I'm sorry," she finds herself gushing like an open wound. "I'm _so_ sorry; I didn't know. I swear, I didn't know any of this."

Of course, he can't reply. 

But she has to be able to give him _some_ freedom. This compulsion can't be so impervious to alteration there's no way to give him any autonomy whatsoever. Right? She just … needs to find the malleability. 

"Lucifer," she says softly, "I want you to speak whenever you have something to say. You don't need to wait for me to ask you a question to talk." But … doesn't that rely on him needing to want to talk? And will he "want" to talk if she doesn't make it clear that's what she also wants? "I want you to assume, even if I'm saying something not worded like a question, that I want your input, whatever it is, if you actually have any." Her stomach twists. "But it's totally okay if you don't. Really, it is."

She half expects him to collapse into a straining, keening pile again, but he doesn't. He doesn't anything except clutch the iPad she gave him, like it's the only thing separating him from oblivion. The yellowing bruises encircling his wrists seem brighter—more damning—as the morning sunshine slants into the room through the blinds.

"Lucifer, I swear, I didn't do this to you," she tells him softly. She won't ask him if he believes her. She can't bear to see him lie again, not when he doesn't want to. "I swear, I didn't."

"I … passed through the barrier," he says, the words distant. More of a question than an assertion.

"Huh?"

"Between Earth and Hell."

Oh. "Right. You went to Hell to keep the demons in line. You were gone for _months_. You showed up in my kitchen last night, bleeding, bound in chains. You asked for help, and then you collapsed onto the floor and started seizing. That's why my kitchen is such a mess. Because you were … you were seizing." She swallows back a wave of grief. "I thought you were dying. I wanted to take you to the emergency room, but you had your wings out, so we couldn't."

"We?"

At least, he seems to be able to speak without her forcing him, now. Progress. She nods. "Me, Ella, Linda, Maze."

"Ah."

For the first time, he seems to note the wanton destruction around him. The pulverized tiles on the floor. The dents in the cabinets and appliances. The melted spice jars and charred pantry contents. The fact the refrigerator he pulled the milk from earlier has a freezer door hanging at a 45-degree angle. 

"You really don't remember _any_ of this?" she asks.

"No." He shakes his head a little. "Or … some, I …." He sounds so lost.

"Maybe we _should_ go to the hospital," she muses. "Your wings are put away now." 

He doesn't reply.

She stares at him, at the bruises, and the scars, and the haunted look ghosting his face. Little tremors race up and down his limbs and torso. His sweatpants have slipped down a few inches. Enough to reveal the puffy top edge of the demonic brand stamped onto his groin. That's not healing. At all. Not like the other marks. And … no. _No_. 

She's not going to force him to go somewhere against his will, to be picked at and prodded by and exposed to strangers, not even for his health. Not when he's not in the grips of a clear, life-threatening emergency, and given his currently conscious, standing under his own power, stringing-together-complete-sentences, sapient state, he's not. 

Maybe when she can figure out how to let him choose. 

But not now.

She wraps a hand around his forearm. Squeezes. Well away from the healing bruise. Only to recoil when he looks down at her fingers like they're foreign invaders worthy of smiting, yet makes no move to step away. Because he _can't_. Fuck. She steps back a foot. Two. Gives him plenty of space.

"We _will_ get you out of this," she says. How? No clue. But. "Lucifer, I promise we will."

They have to.

He takes a rickety breath. "I'm—"

The sound of the doorbell makes her jump. A rattling knock follows, shaking the door on its frame. 

"No," Chloe says, almost a moan. She glances at her watch. 7:45 a.m. "They're too _early_!" 

Lucifer steps toward the door like he means to block them entry. 

"I didn't mean for you to be my guard angel!" 

"Who—" says Lucifer, and then he stills, a stride in front of Chloe. "Mazikeen. And … Ms. Lopez?" 

The doorbell sounds again.

"Hey, Decker, open up!" calls Maze. The doorknob jiggles.

"Shit," mumbles Chloe.

"Please," Lucifer says. "Please. They—" The word strangles to a halt like his vocal cords have ceased to function. Desperation sears across his face, though his anguish seems bizarre when packaged in a body that isn't moving beyond its shifting facial expressions. " _Please,_ Detective, you cannot let them know of this."

But before Chloe can make an executive decision to send him upstairs—to hide him away from prying friends—the front door swings back on its hinges, revealing Maze and a wild-eyed Ella. Maze tosses a silver-colored key onto the end table by the door. "Hey, Decker. You weren't answering."

"Dude, I _told_ you, you gotta wait more than thirty seconds," says Ella, who beams despite her bloodshot eyes and smudged mascara. "Lucifer! Hey, buddy o' mine oh boy oh Beelzebub. Feeling any better? You seem better. Sorta. But, hey, you're standing, and looking at me, and you're maybe not entirely with the talky talky stuff yet, but, still, that's good, right?" She twitches. "By the way, I haven't actually slept yet, so—" 

"Ella," Chloe says, "this really isn't—"

"Sorry I'm early," Ella continues. "It's just … I've got questions!"

"Chick's got questions," Maze echoes with a shrug.

"Like, namely, what the hell happened last night, and also, literally, what the Hell?" Ella turns to Lucifer. "Is it like Dante thought, or more like _Preacher_ , or _the_ _Good Place_? Oh, or something else? Like a dimension with no shrimp?"

Maze snorts, hiding her mouth behind her hand.

"No … shrimp?" Chloe asks. 

"I've no idea," answers Lucifer tightly.

"It's a Buffy thing," says Ella.

"That's okay," Chloe says to Lucifer before shifting gears. "Now is not a great time, guys. We _just_ woke up, and—"

"You're right, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm a bit loopy. I did lots of thinking last night. And drinking. Maybe a little sinking. Don't worry; I took an Uber here." Ella raises her arms and lurches toward Lucifer. "Bring it in, bud—"

"Don't touch him!" blurts Chloe, stepping between them. 

Ella snaps to a halt. 

Shit.

"I admit I'm … rather out of sorts," Lucifer says quietly, still not moving. "I'd prefer hands off."

"Oh," says Ella, her voice small. "Oh, I'm sorry. But … you're better, right?"

"It's nothing we can't fix with more sleep, I'm sure," adds Chloe in a pointed tone.

"Yes," agrees Lucifer, with perhaps more hope than certainty. "Sleep."

Ella yawns as if on cue, her eyes tearing as she shuffle steps toward the couch. "I just realized I forgot the donuts." She collapses onto the middle cushion as she reaches for her phone. "Oh, this is comfy. This is … g'night." Her crash and burn happens from one tired blink to the next. A raucous snore pierces the awkward silence, and her head tips forward onto her chest, spilling her ponytail over her shoulder. 

Chloe almost thinks they're in the clear. Almost. Until Maze steps back into view. "So, you guys wanna tell me what's going on, or do I have to guess?" She twirls one of her curved Hell knives around her thumb. "I make guesses by sticking these into things, if you're curious." 


	3. "Sadist Simon Says"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the lovely comments, everybody :) Also just wanted to remind people this was written before S5. Let the Joss-ing begin, shall we?

Chloe has no idea what to say. None. Lucifer seems like he wants to crawl under the broken floor and die of embarrassment. She looks at Maze, who Chloe's just now realizing is wearing the exact same outfit as before: black leather pants with spike-heeled boots, a black leather bustier, and an ankle-length black jacket that flows like a cape. "Have you been here all night?"

Maze sneers. "Don't avoid the question, Decker."

"I'm not; I'm just—"

"I wasn't gonna leave him unguarded."

"You've been keeping watch since yesterday?" Chloe asks.

"It would seem likely," says Lucifer.

"Course I have," Maze confirms. "And you're really not convincing me it wasn't needed." 

"We're fine," insists Chloe. "I swear."

"The Detective and I will handle it," adds Lucifer.

"Uh huh," says Maze, her tone flat. In a blur of movement, she slashes her knife at Lucifer, who doesn't—can't—block it. The tip of the blade stops a millimeter from his eye, and all he can do is blink at it, a fresh flashfire of blush creeping down his throat. "That's not the King of Hell I know. What gives? Is it my mother's mark?" 

Chloe and Lucifer exchange a panicked look.

"Oh, come _on_ ," Maze says, rolling her eyes. "I can smell it on him. I could smell it last night, but I was hoping it would fade. It's definitely less now, but …."

"Hoping _what_ would fade?" asks Chloe.

"The mark, presumably," says Lucifer, scowling. "What bloody mark?"

"Duh," Maze says. "He's ensorcelled. Which … based on your _weird_ ness, I'm guessing you've figured out." With the tip of her knife, she inches down the waistband of his sweatpants, revealing the brand. "And I meant that mark. It stinks."

"Stop it." Chloe slaps Maze's wrist away. "Don't do that to him."

"Hello, I'm bloody well standing right here, you know!" he says, jaw clenching. "I'd prefer you not to discuss me as though I were absent." His fists clench, too. " _What_ bloody mark?"

"Look down," Chloe says, gesturing at his bellybutton, and his head cranes down. "Near your navel. Move your waistband a little to see."

He shifts the iPad to his left hand, and with the trembling fingers of his right, he scrabbles across his skin, yanking at the fleece, exposing the whole brand to air. The mark is puffy and red like a burn. His pallor drains. "That's Lilith's seal. That's …." 

"Lilith?" asks Chloe.

"Yes."

"Yeah, my 'mom,'" Maze explains, putting the word mom in air quotes. "Like I said."

"Your _mother_?"

"Yes," confirms Lucifer.

"Not much of one," Maze says. She regards Lucifer's brand, her gaze creasing like she's sizing up a knife throw. "I could scrape it off, if you want. Shouldn't be too much trouble."

"Would that get rid of the spell?" Chloe asks. "The ensorcellment?" 

"How should I bloody know?" Misery encroaches on Lucifer's face. "This can't …. This can't …." He gasps. 

"It's okay if you don't know," Chloe assures him.

"Detective, Lilith is no sorceress," he continues, finding his words again, "and I'm the bloody _Devil_. She's never been able to hurt me before."

"Meaning she's tried?" 

"Of course she has!" He sounds more panicked than angry. "She's … she's bloody Lilith, and I'm her bloody jailor." 

"You were gone a long time before you went back," Maze says. "Maybe she picked up new hobbies. How would you know?"

Lucifer doesn't speak.

"So, what's the deal? You can't talk unless Decker asks you shit?"

"Something like that," Chloe explains when Lucifer doesn't. She glances at Maze's knife. At the brand marring Lucifer's skin. His thumb is pressed against the top edge of the scar, and now he seems frozen that way, staring blankly into space like his world just ended all over again. "You're seriously suggesting we cut off his skin—as in remove his _actual_ skin?"

"Obviously," says Lucifer.

"Only in the one spot," says Maze.

Chloe folds her arms. "No."

"Look, do you want him to stop playing Simon Says with you or not?"

"Maze, I can't—no, I _won't—_ force him to do that, and he doesn't have the capacity to consent right now."

"Please, Mazikeen," he interjects. "Just be quick about it." 

"How did you …?" Chloe asks, trailing away.

"You've allowed me to speak my mind after you've spoken yours, if I've a mind to speak, which I do, and believe you me, this"—his glare could burn the world to ash—" _delightful_ sitch happily allows me to beg."

"And you're sure you want Maze to …?" She gestures impotently.

"Perhaps you could command me not to feel the knife? Make this"—his teeth grind—" _ineffable perfection_ all the better, yes?"

"How long do you need?" Chloe asks Maze.

"I'd imagine not long," says Lucifer.

Maze scrutinizes the blemish. "If you order him not to squirm, a couple of minutes. If that."

Order him not to squirm. Order him. Chloe's insides twist. The sheer idea. That she could do that to him, and he would have to let Maze carve him up whether he wants it or not is … repulsive. On a physical, chemical, _everything_ level.

"No," Chloes says, the word an upset warble. "I am not ordering him not to _squirm_." Jesus.

"Detective," Lucifer murmurs behind her. "I understand you're horrified right now, but …." 

_But please, get me out of this bloody mess_ , he doesn't say. Doesn't beg. _Please, see to my safety, and my health, and my happiness, since I am unable. Please, help me._ He doesn't need to. 

"Do you trust me?" she asks in a small voice.

His gaze softens. "Yes."

"So … you believe me? That I didn't do this?"

" _Yes_ ," he repeats more emphatically. "I admit … I'd a moment of doubt, but no longer." 

Not a lie. None of it is. This compulsion may force him to sing her praises, but it doesn't hide when he's being false. He hates lying too much to be any good at it.

"Would the bathroom or the kitchen work best for this?" she asks.

"It would seem I've already destroyed the kitchen," says Lucifer.

"Depends where you want the blood," Maze adds.

Right. Of course. Chloe directs an unhappy look at the roll of paper towels she keeps in the corner by the toaster oven—the towels are nothing but a crisped, black husk, and scorch marks scar the sides of the oven. The kitchen is toast, like Lucifer said. What does it even matter, anymore?

"Lucifer, I don't want you to feel pain," she says.

His whole body tenses, and he collapses against the countertop with a moan, the iPad clattering from his hand.

"Never mind!" 

"I suppose," Lucifer says tiredly as he relaxes, panting, "the compulsion isn't interested in having its primary motivator taken away."

Right. Shit. 

"Wow," says Maze. "This isn't Simon Says. This is like … _Sadist_ Simon Says." 

"It's _torture_ , Maze," Chloe snaps. "He's being tortured. Every time I fuck up."

"Isn't that what I said?"

"Detective, you are not _fucking up_ ," Lucifer assures her. "I think you're doing quite well, considering." 

Then why does she want to cry?

Unless that's the compulsion speaking for him again.

"Look, I don't know if this will work, but"—she _hopes_ it doesn't, actually, because the implications are appalling—"but is it okay if I try to put you out?" Lucifer opens his mouth to reply, but she holds up her hand. "Wait, never mind." 

Of course it's "okay." 

He has to be okay with whatever she wants him to be okay with, so, of course, he'll say yes to a leading question like that. But he's been expressing preferences now and then. He can ask—beg—for things. He still has his own desires. Is it just that he can't express them or act on them in ways that supersede hers? 

"If you had the ability to choose for yourself right now," Chloe asks, "would you choose for me to attempt to render you unconscious, or would you choose to be awake?"

Lucifer ponders. He doesn't ponder fast enough. The force of the compulsion makes him curl in on himself, pressing his elbows into the counter, until he blurts, "The latter. Please. Please, the latter."

"You don't sound happy with either option." Or he would have answered without being forced.

"Whatever you prefer," he says.

"Tell me what you're actually thinking, please."

"You mean to command me unconscious, yes?"

"That was my thought, yeah," she confirms. "So it doesn't hurt?"

"It's only I don't see how I can hear a command to wake if you somehow manage to put me out."

"When I commanded you to rest, you woke up on your own."

"Yes, but rest has a far broader definition than unconsciousness, Detective."

Which … good point. Fuck. "I … could build in a time limit? Into the command that puts you under. Would you choose _that_ if you had the ability to choose for yourself right now?"

"No."

"I could clock him," Maze suggests.

" _No_!" Chloe says. "He had a seizure last night. I don't think the solution here is to give him _more_ brain damage."

Maze shrugs. "Just saying."

"Well, thank you. But no."

"Please, let's just get on with this," he says. "I'm the Devil. Unconscious or not, I can handle a little plastic surgery with Dr. Mazikeen." 

"Okay," Chloe says, lips forming a grim line. "Okay, if you're sure."

He glares into space without answering, which seems to be as close to an explicit yes as he'll get. 

"Maze, do you need help for this?"

"Nah," answers Maze with disturbing nonchalance. "I got it."

* * *

"Hey, Ella?" Chloe murmurs after a brief call to Linda to tell her not to come back today. 

_Does he know_? Linda had choked out. _Does Lucifer know where …?_

And Chloe had only been able to reply, _No, Linda, I'm so sorry._

She rubs Ella's shoulder. At first, Ella only mutters and grumbles, turning away to smash her face into one of the end pillows. "Ella, I got you an Uber. It should be here in a few. Ella?"

Nothing.

When Chloe persists, though, Ella cracks open one eyelid and then the other. "What?"

"I got you an Uber. It'll be here soon."

"Oh." Ella rubs her eyes, smearing her makeup. Her hair sticks up, kinking on one side. "Coffee?" 

"My coffee maker got smote, unfortunately."

Ella clasps her fingers together, flips her palms toward the ceiling, and stretches upward, groaning. "I'm sorry for barging in like this. You'd probably rather spend time with Lucifer."

"Oh, Ella, it's not that. Not at _all_ ," Chloe says, sinking tiredly against the couch cushions. "And you didn't barge in; you can visit anytime." Ella seems doubtful. "I know— _believe me_ I know—how much this is to process. It's just …." Maze is working on Lucifer behind the counter, on the floor, out of sight, but not out of auditory range. Yet, Lucifer's not making a peep, not one pained grunt. "I've got kind of an emergency situation here I'm trying to resolve."

"Lucifer's still an emergency?" Ella asks. "Is he—"

"Physically, he's fine." Mostly. Maybe. "There's just … other fallout to deal with."

"Can I help?"

"I don't think so," Chloe says.

"So, it's a one-crisis-at-a-time sorta thing?" 

"Yeah. Yeah, exactly." 

"I guess I'm not exactly a crisis right now anyway, am I?" Ella pastes a smile on her face that doesn't reach her eyes. "God is real, my best besuited buddy has, like, legit Hell cred. I've been dealing with a ghost since I was eight-years old. What's a little more crazy on my big ol' plate, y'know?" She forms circles with the thumbs and index fingers of both hands, splaying her other fingers like the crowns on roosters. "I am o-kay."

"Ella—"

"Hey, speaking of which, did you see the morning news?"

"Um, no?"

"I was just wondering if that stuff's really real."

A rustling sound, the scrape of cloth on stone, interjects from behind the counter. But Maze doesn't ask for help. Doesn't comment.

"What stuff?" Chloe says.

"Ghosts!" Ella exclaims. "I figure the Devil would know for sure, and then I could finally legitimately find out if I'm crazy or not. Bright side, amirite? That's why I barged in."

"Ella, you didn't barge in." Wait. "Ghosts?"

"Yeah, apparently some guy caught a cellphone video of his kitchen utensils levitating—the news anchors were having a field day showing the clip and discussing whether it's been doctored in some way—and I was just wondering is all."

"Well, I …." Ghosts. Huh. "I would _assume_ ghosts are a thing?"

"But you don't know?" Ella presses.

"I've … never asked."

"Dude. You've known the Devil is the Devil for"—Ella squints at her, nose wrinkling up—"how long now?"

"Since Pierce died."

"So, like, seven-ish months before he left for Hell! And you haven't asked him all your burning metaphysical questions yet?"

"I guess my need to know about ghosts wasn't all that burning," Chloe says.

"Well, for me, it's like a _ser_ ious UTI, like a—hey, is that why you and Lucifer nearly 'broke up' as work partners last year?" 

"A serious UTI?"

"No, silly," Ella says, fist-bumping Chloe's shoulder. "Finding out he was the honest-to-literal-God-Devil."

"Oh." Chloe glances at her lap. "Yeah. I … I didn't handle the newsflash all that well at first."

"Probably didn't help that his old flame showed up at _exactly_ the same—wait." Ella stills. "Eve was Eve, like _Eve_ Eve?"

"Yeah, I wasn't so thrilled about that either."

"But you're telling me I Frenched my thousand-million-whatever-times great grandmother?"

"… Yes?"

Chloe's phone vibrates before Ella can come up with a coherent response. "I guess that's my car, huh?" Ella says as she cranes her head to read the notification on the screen. "Does Linda know?" She stands. "Can I ask her?"

"About Eve?"

"No, if there are ghosts."

"I'm not sure." Chloe follows Ella toward the front door. "She's known about Lucifer the longest, so, maybe?"

"Yep, I"—Ella slams to a halt as she rounds the corner, the kitchen now unobstructed—"whoa that's a lot of …." Lucifer is sprawled on his side across the tile, his sweatpants pushed unceremoniously down to mid-thigh. Blood snakes down his skin in rich red tendrils. Wet wine-dark blotches the size of dinner plates stain the terrycloth towels packed underneath him. Maze crouches beside him, perched like a lioness over her kill, mid-slice with the sharp-edge of her curved knife. Skin separates, and Chloe can _hear_ it. Like someone's cutting up a chicken breast for dinner. And Lucifer's staring into space, checked out of his own fucking body like it was a bad hotel. " _Whoaaa_."

Chloe's stomach roils at the sight. At the _sounds_. She turns away, gagging against her hand. She can handle gore. She can. But seeing it—hearing it—actively perpetrated is …. 

"What are you _doing_?" asks Ella.

"Think of it like a mole removal," Maze snarks. 

Which doesn't help, and prompts Ella to squeak, "Lucifer has a melanoma?"

"Okay, more like a brain tumor, I guess."

Chloe grabs Ella's hand and drags her out of the apartment, slamming the door shut behind them. Chloe gasps for fresh air on the stoop, cleansed by the sun. 

"Holy sweet bejesus, you weren't kidding about crises," Ella says. 

Chloe swallows back nausea. "I wouldn't lie to you." 

"What was—" Ella holds up a hand. "Wait. Wait. You know what? I think my brain is at capacity right now on the holy-freaking-crap of it all. I trust you. You can tell me later." She giggles manically, snorts, and giggles again. "Heh. Holy. Heh. I never realized that was literal before." A head shake, and she's serious again. "But he's. He'll be okay, right?" 

"We hope so," Chloe says, offering her a wavering smile. "I'll tell him you wished him well."

"See you at work?" 

"Maybe. I'll keep you posted."

"Great," says Ella. "So, what car am I looking for?"

* * *

Despite the brand being removed, Lucifer remains sprawled and empty-eyed by Maze's boot, while Maze wipes down her blade in the sink. Bloody towels pile around his body. A sewing kit perches on the counter. The top edge of a gauze pad just pokes over his waistband. 

"Is it done?" Chloe says. 

"Yup," Maze replies. 

"You didn't have to leave him on the floor like that."

"I was gonna carry him upstairs after I finished cleaning off my blade." She scrapes something away from her knifepoint that's solid-ish and stretchy and dripping dark fluid. It lands in the sink with a wet-sounding splat.

Chloe kneels on the floor beside him. "Lucifer," she says softly. "Lucifer, it's over."

Instead of waking groggy, like someone fighting anesthesia, he fixes on her with a blink. At first, his expression seems warm like a hearth fire, and she can pretend he slipped and fell. He didn't leave her. He hasn't been gone. There is no curse. This isn't a living nightmare. But then his hope implodes—the fire dies. 

"It didn't work, did it?" Chloe says, slumping.

"No," he says, the word tiny. "I still can't move."

Even Maze seems troubled, now, as she crouches beside him. "Maybe it takes a few hours to wear off?" She takes a whiff. "Something still reeks."

What little light is left in his expression wanes. 

"Lucifer," Chloe says softly. A cue. So he can actually talk. Her stomach churns.

"I find it far more likely," he says in a low, dangerous tone, his fingers clenching into fists beside his hips, "that someone has played a terrible joke on me. That … that my mental _predicament_ … has little to no connection with my physical state." 

"Would you like to—I mean, if you had the ability to choose for yourself, would you choose to sit up?" 

"Yes," he grits out. 

"Please, sit up," she tells him, holding out her arm for him. He uses her offered bicep for leverage, yanking himself upright. "Do you think the hole in your memory is related to this compulsion thing?"

"Detective, I don't bloody know," he snaps. "I don't know _what's_ happened, because I've no bloody memory."

"It's okay. Who might have wanted to do this?"

"What, leash me to you like your dog?"

"Get _rid_ of you, Lucifer."

"I think it might be quicker to answer who _wouldn't_ want me gone. I am the Devil, after all." 

"I wouldn't," Chloe says softly. 

He clears his throat, his burning anger cooling momentarily to embers. "Yes, well …."

"My vote's still on Lilith," says Maze.

"Why?" asks Chloe.

"Because it's _always_ Lilith," Lucifer seethes.

"She's an asshole," Maze adds, nodding. "Plus, Lucifer was in Hell."

"We only _think_ Lucifer was in Hell," Chloe interjects. "We can't make assumptions like that." 

"Look, Lilith obviously got her hands on him at some point, or I wouldn't have spent the past few minutes making flesh ribbons out of her mark, and—"

"Would Lilith really use chains, though?" Chloe asks.

"What a question," Lucifer huffs. "Yes, she would, Detective." He frowns. "What chains?"

"You arrived here in chains." She gestures to the pile of rubble by the wall. The metal chains snake through the mess. "But Maze said they're plain and shouldn't have held you. So, I was just wondering if—"

"You mean, would Lilith trap me in chains I could easily break, were it not for a command not to break them? Of course she would, if she thought it would torment me." _And it would_ , he leaves unspoken. His gaze is black as soot. 

"But … but they have normal metal in Hell?"

"Most metal forged in Hell is not Hell-forged, Detective," he explains, the words infused with enough midnight she can't help but shiver. "It's normal metal like any other. Hell-forging is an arduous smelting process involving demon blood and angel feathers." He turns his gaze on Maze. "That's why Mazikeen's knives are so valuable. Not many angels will give up feathers to a demon."

"And unless Lilith really has gotten a new hobby," Maze continues, "she can't leave Hell, so—"

"Wait, she can't?" Chloe asks.

"Lilith is _human_ , Detective," Lucifer says through his teeth, like he's barely rationing his fury enough to convey spoken word. "Not demon. She can't possess people."

"But I thought …." 

"Surprise," Maze says. "The Mother of Demons is human."

Which … makes as much fucking sense as the rest of this, but … that's another discussion. "I thought you guys said humans imprison themselves in Hell with their own guilt. What if Lilith stops feeling guilty?"

"Human souls are free to leave Hell, yes; they're untethered," Lucifer replies. "But Lilith isn't dead and never shall be. Immortality is her punishment, like it was for Cain."

"Oh," Chloe says.

"Mazikeen, please, I need you to locate Mr. Constantine," Lucifer says, his fingers clenched, his measured tone so forced he could wield it like a weapon. "I need you to do it _now_. As expediently as is possible. Use every resource at your disposal." 

"Yeah, no problem." Maze sniffs, her shoulders straightening with a sudden, injected bravado. "But you'd owe me."

Lucifer says nothing.

"Who's Mr. Constantine?" says Chloe.

"Curses and magic are dying arts. Dead, really. I presume … if anyone of this earth were able to de-hex me," Lucifer answers, "he would be the one."

"John Constantine," adds Maze. "He's a warlock. Specializes in the occult. Plus, he and Lucifer have occasionally crossed paths over the years." She turns to Lucifer. "What I want to know is why you think he'd even _consider_ helping you."

"They don't like each other?" hazards Chloe.

"I'm more inclined to call it enmity," says Lucifer, glowering.

"Pfft," snorts Maze. "Still the understatement of the fucking millennium."

Chloe's feeling of being out of her depth is an almost overwhelming crush, threatening to knock her onto her back in the sand. "But he _might_ help?"

"I prefer to believe he'll be amenable," Lucifer grits out, "when he finds out Satan himself has become some bloody human's bloody _pet_."

Like Chloe's just some vermin. "Lucifer …."

Some of his menace bleeds away. "I didn't mean that how it sounded. I'm—" Furious. Violated. Panicking. Ready to gnaw off his own foot like a fox caught in a trap. "Apologies, Detective."

Worse, she's not sure if he's apologizing to her because he's being spurred to do so by the stupid compulsion, or because he's actually sorry, and she suddenly regrets even saying anything. "No, it's … it's okay." Even though it's not. "This whole situation is just"—heinous—"spectacular. On _every_ level. And …." And it's not her prerogative to be offended by anything he says right now. It just isn't. He's the victim. Not her.

He looks away.

"So," Maze says in the awkward, stretching silence, "sounds like I've got a weasel-y little warlock to catch." She rises to her feet, whisking her knives into the leather sheaths she keeps concealed beneath her jacket. "I might be a while. I'm not even sure he's in this dimension. But I'll try to keep in touch."

"Wait, what?" Chloe says with a blink. "He's what?"

"She said he might be in another dimension," Lucifer says.

"Yeah, I got that part, but—"

But Maze is gone in a whisper of leather and metal and stealth, before Chloe can even conceptualize the fact that she moved. "Jesus!" Chloe snaps, flinching back against the opposite cabinet as her heart kicks like a drum against her sternum. 

"Not quite," Lucifer says softly. 

She pulls her fingers through her hair, flashing a shaky smile at him. "I'd rather have you here than him anyway."

"Well, Detective, you have me now. Whatever will you choose to do with me?" 

She doesn't miss the slight worried quaver in his tone. His sudden lack of interest in meeting her eyes. All of his earlier fury seems to have fled on Maze's coattails. 

"We will get you out of this," she tells him. "Lucifer, we will."

His silence in the wake of that assertion is … worse than telling. 

"Do you …?" Need anything, she almost said. Fuck. A useless question. He probably "needs" whatever she deigns to give him. She grits her teeth. "I just want you to do what _you_ want," she tries. 

"You've expressed no desire for me to do anything apart from what I'm already doing—which is to sit here like a bloody pet rock—so, I'm bloody well stuck."

"But … you clearly still want things. So, I don't get why telling you to do what _you_ want doesn't work."

"I don't entirely understand it myself," he says, demoralized. Tired. 

"Will you please _try_ to explain?" 

The same thing that happened before happens again. He can't put words together fast enough to keep the stupid compulsion from punishing him for not answering her, and then he can't put words together at all because he's overcome by the punishment itself. A catch-22. 

"Never mind!" she snaps. "Never fucking mind. _Jesus_." 

He sags against the counter, too wrecked to do more than utter a brief, rasping croak that speaks of lingering ruin.

"Sorry," she says. "I'm sorry. I'm just trying to understand this thing. To see if there's some way to get around this semantical bullsh—" She stops herself and shifts to a forced, bright tone. "This _amazingness_."

"I know," he says, the words enervated.

"I want you to take as much time as necessary to explain why me telling you to do what you want, forces you to do what _I_ supposedly want instead."

She waits, unmoving, quiet, only the agonized, sputtering hum of her damaged refrigerator filling the space between them. At least, he remains unprovoked by unseen "motivation."

"I've … priorities I can't seem to disregard," he eventually says. "I've tried, but …." He considers, staring into space. "I suppose it would perhaps be a bit like you saying, 'I desire to remain awake,' even when you're knackered. Eventually, you've no choice in the matter. You'll sleep no matter what your other desires may be."

"So, you're, like, completely exhausted, and your desire to do whatever I want is sleep, and your desire to do anything else is … well … everything else?" 

"Something akin to that, yes," he confirms. "I do desire other things, and now that you've enabled me, I can talk of them whenever they don't conflict with the overarching intent of whatever the bloody hell I've been hexed with. But beyond expressing these desires idly to you, there's nothing I can bloody _do_ with them. It's … as though I've been blocked from the ability to connect thought to action." 

She tries to think of a command that could release him. One she hasn't tried yet. "Lucifer, I want you to be free."

His desperate, awful sob as his body stiffens and flails makes her gut drop. 

"I mean, I want you to be mine!" she amends in a rush.

The room starts to spin, and she can't breathe again. She can't _breathe_ with him sitting there, looking at a fixed point on the floor rather than at her, his expression drowning in resentment and terror and embarrassment, like his world has ended. His world _has_ ended, because what little he has left is defined by her whims alone. His world is _her_ world.

Grief burbles up from within. 

His breaths tighten at her first low-pitched warble of misery. He contorts, his body hitching in her direction before he gives into the impulse, and his motion becomes fluid. And then he slides across the floor. Without speaking, he tries to wrap his arms around her. 

"Don't!" she blurts, splaying her palm against his chest and shoving him away. In a mad scramble, she crab walks backward. Broken tiles pinch her palms and feet. "Don't fucking do that. Me crying is not your fucking cue to drop everything and hug me, okay?"

"Very well," he replies, his words dark and seething, his expression … nauseated. 

Angry. 

Awful.

He didn't want to touch her. Or comfort her. 

He didn't want _any_ of this. 

Stress makes her vision fuzz, thinking about that. 

That she's forced him simply by existing, by _feeling_. 

This whole fucking conversation has been forced. He has to answer her questions. He has to do what she says. He even has to do what she doesn't say, if she so much as implies a desire. Every time she's touched him, she's been violating him. He's only even wearing clothes because she made him do it. 

She's taken his choices away. Lucifer. The brightest angel. The one who fell in the fucking name of choice.

He's powerless, and she might as well be God.

She scrubs furiously at her eyes, trying to stay her upset, to keep him from having another overriding impulse to comfort her. All while he sits there, silent, stewing, his eyes as bleak and black as the Abyss. 

"Lucifer," she says with forced, measured calm, "if you didn't have to prioritize my desires right now, what would you choose to do in this moment?"

"Leave," he replies without hesitation. A dry, grief-stricken cough catches in his throat, and he adds a strangled, "Please, Chloe. _Please_ , let me leave."

Leave. _Chloe_. His use of her name cuts like razors. His soft, desperate inclusion of the word please—twice—makes it worse. 

Of course he wants to get the fuck away from her.

Her basest most-visceral instinct is to ask him, _Where in the hell would you go_? _How?_ But what right has she to know? Then her more rational side kicks in to wonder if letting him leave is even wise right now. But what if telling him to leave is the real way to free him? Like some kind of fucked up anti-fairytale. Maybe being away from the intense nexus of her desires she represents would allow him to re-prioritize his own wants and needs. 

Worse than that, her hesitation—just a fraction of a second—is enough to make him look at her like he's re-discovered Kinley's vial of poison in her purse.

" _Of course_ you can leave," she rushes to tell him. "God, anything. I would never force you to be here. Not ever. Lucifer, I promise you, I wouldn't." 

When he doesn't move, doesn't speak, the pain in her chest becomes a twisting, serrated knife, but she resolves herself.

"Lucifer, I want you to leave now." The words hurt like thumbtacks scraping her throat, such a wild one-eighty to months ago, when she'd been begging him to stay. 

"Thank you," he says, his relief palpable.

She doesn't see him move. One moment he's there. The next, he's gone in a rustle of shining feathers. 

She sinks against the cabinet in a shaking, boneless heap, crying for the loss all over again. 


	4. "trying to don a hoodie or some such"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments! A lot of you have expressed that these early chapters are really painful—I just wanted to assure everybody that what Chloe & Lucifer are going through is a process, and that the intensity of things will level out a bit soon. This is a drama that ebbs and flows, and there's lots of humor, romance, sensuality, and mystery, too.

She's still on the floor an hour later, staring into space with aching, tired eyes, when he poofs into the room in a heap of feathers and flesh, straining, convulsing, bleeding from the mouth and lip. Her heart skips into high gear, and she flinches back in shock. 

"Oh, my—Lucifer!" 

His wings slap and smash into what's left of her charred table and chairs, knocking them aside, breaking one. He collapses next to her, spine bowing, muscles taut and twitching as he prostrates himself at her feet. His toes and fingers curl, and he _wails,_ the sound low-pitched and awful and urgent. 

"Lucifer! What is it?" she pleads. "God, what's wrong?"

But he's already nonsensical, crying, choking, gnashing his teeth and shredding his fingernails against the tile in front of him, and her question only seems to make him worse. He snaps and saws like a flag in the wind. 

"Never mind!" she says. 

But that doesn't help. 

He inches across the tile to her, his eyes averted to the floor. "Please," he begs, strangled and hurting and pitiful. "Please. P-please."

His shoulder blades ripple under his skin, the heaving, sweat-slicked expanse where feathers meet flesh presented to her as he arches on all fours like a scared cat. His quadriceps bunch, and he pushes closer, until a hair's width separates them.

"Please," he begs again, sobbing. "Please." 

"Please, _what_?"

" _Please_."

"Lucifer, I don't know what that _means_!"

He shudders, and then he's just openly caterwauling. Her brain short circuits. She can't. She can't not— She plunges her fingers into his sweaty hair in an attempt to reassure him.

Whatever's torturing him ceases like a switch got flipped, and he crumbles with a dissatisfied, muffled sob onto his side. His lungs heave. Blood oozes from his busted lip where he bit himself. He's still wearing only the sweatpants she chose for him earlier, though the blood from his mouth and the sweat from his torso have mingled, dripped down his body, and soaked into the waistband, staining it. The crotch bulges painfully at the center seam. His hair is ripped up, disheveled chaos, his wings an off-kilter mess fanned across her floor. 

She claps a hand to her mouth, crying softly through the gaps in her fingers.

Only for him to moan again, deep and low and pained and _awful_. He convulses like wave crashing into a beach. And then, limbs shaking, he rolls onto all fours, reaching for—

"Stop!" she snaps before he touches her. "I don't want or need you to comfort me right now."

He buckles back to the floor, curling into a heap at her feet, like the only thing that had been driving him forward had been a base, visceral need to escape suffering. His bloody mouth and pale skin make him seem like he just auditioned for _Dracula_. A little shiver wracks his frame. And then another. And another. His feathers twitch. And then he's openly trembling, his pupils blown, his expression wide-eyed and blank, like he's going into shock. 

"Lucifer," she whispers, "I …."

But what the hell can she say? Or do? Asking him something would be to compel him again, after he was just tortured for failing to obey. Trying to take care of him or touch him would be forcing herself on him, too. God, she feels sick.

"Lucifer," she warns him softly, "I'm … th-thinking of leaving for a bit to … to help you heal. I'm … I'm thinking that might be … useful."

"No," arrives his tiny, breathless response. His fingers clench. His eyes are a dolorous void as he focuses on her. " _Please_."

"Okay." She swallows back vomit. "Okay, I won't. I promise."

Now, what?

He shivers, his gaze spacing out again, like he's sinking back into shock. His brilliant feathers cast a warm, tremulous glow into the room. The longest of his primaries drag against the floor, picking up dust and detritus from the pulverized tiles.

"It seems like," she says, "you m-might choose to put your wings away, if you could prioritize your desires over mine."

"Yes," he says. "Please."

"I want you to put your wings away."

His gleaming feathers thrash out of reality. A wall of air whooshes against her skin. She braces herself against the back cabinet. 

"It seems like," she continues, "if you didn't have to prioritize my desires, you might be trying to decide whether to get up or rest awhile."

"Up," he almost hiccups. "Please."

"I want you to get up."

He lurches to his feet, still trembling, though it's getting worse. She rises with him. His eyes are wet and red. Drying blood crusts his chin. Her chest aches like a hippo squashed it, and she wants to wrap him in her arms so badly, not just for him but for her. Months. They've been apart for months, and this is the fucking reunion they get.

"I don't want comfort," she blurts before he can even cotton to the fact she's falling apart.

He closes his eyes. Maybe so he can't see her crying, so he doesn't get re-compelled. Maybe because that's the only way he can be alone.

"It seems like, if you didn't have to prioritize my desires, you might," she says, the words low-pitched and slurred with grief, "choose to have some privacy." 

"Please, yes," he bleats.

There are semantics here. More to work with to possibly give him some freedom. But not when everything's raw and wrecked.

"You might clean up, too," she continues hesitantly. 

"Please."

"Okay. O-okay, I'd … I'd like you to go to the upstairs bathroom and clean up, and, if you weren't required to prioritize my desires and would choose to stay, stay, until, if you didn't have to prioritize my desires, you would choose _not_ to stay. Then return to me, and"—her mind races as she tries to consider all possible cases and scenarios, trying to make sure he's not left dangling somewhere, but she can't think of anything—"and we'll … f-figure out what's next when you're … when you're done."

He flees too fast for her eyes to process. 

He's simply there, and then not. 

She sniffs. At least, she's starting to have an idea how to word things to give him choices. Narrow choices, but a narrow set of choices is better than none. Her exposure to the complicated legalese sometimes present in search warrants is proving to be a boon.

Her shower runs for forty minutes, and after, the sound of the whirring exhaust fan fills the suffocating silence. She sweeps the broken chair bits to the side of the room with the other rubble, throwing out the biggest pieces. After, she watches television for a while, churning through some of her Netflix queue, watching without absorbing a damned thing as she tries not to think of him having some kind of nervous breakdown in her bathroom. If he wanted to rejoin her, he would. She assured he would. The best thing she can do for him right now is leave him alone. She hopes.

Except as one hour becomes two and then almost three, her uncertainty begins to outweigh her desire not to disturb him. What if she didn't word something right, and he's stuck? Or—

He steps in front of her television, blocking her view. Naked. Naked, clean, his hair slicked back but drying, his skin a riotous red mottled across his face and throat and chest. His piercings—penny-sized hoops punched through each pert nipple, and a metal barbell peeking just past his foreskin—gleam like polished starlight. The soiled gauze bandage that had been covering Maze's knife work has been replaced by three of Trixie's _My Little Pony_ Band-Aids. His clenched fists rest beside his hips, his arms rod straight, like he's being forced to maintain that position, exposed, on display for her. 

"Lucifer, you're … um."

"You didn't say you wanted me to dress or dry," he mutters, morose, not looking at her. "I'd some leeway in deciding what 'clean up' meant, but …." 

"Oh. Oh, God." She snatches the purple afghan off the back of the couch and foists it at him. He clutches at it like a lifeline. "Why didn't you _say_ something?"

"You've only allowed me to speak when you speak, first."

"Oh." Shit. Her eyes widen in her struggle not to let her gaze wander anywhere south of his face. "The … um." She tips her nose at the balled up afghan. "I want you to wrap that around your body in a way that preserves your—uh … an average human's—modesty."

With trembling hands, he drapes the blanket around his torso, cinching it under his armpits, covering his body from pectorals to kneecaps like a towel toga. 

"I've got some more stuff of Dan's that'll probably fit you until we can get you some suits. Some sweats and things, I think." Leftovers from a family beach trip with Trixie. "In my closet."

"You desire me to wear Daniel's clothes again?" 

"Would you choose to, if you could?"

"Not bloody particularly, but it would be far better than this—" He seethes, abruptly cut off. "This i-idyllic privilege." His puce hue deepens. 

Fury boils in her gut. Disgust. They need to find a way around this. Some of this. At the very least, he should have freedom of fucking speech. 

"I'm," she hazards, "wondering if phrasing questions as statements saves you from having to answer."

Silence, at first. Strain paints itself across his face. 

"No," he blurts like he shot the word from a gun, relaxing once he's spoken. "I suppose it's the same bloody thing as you crying. As soon as I'm aware of your 'wonder,' I need to respond." 

She mulls for a bit. "But if I don't say I'm wondering—if I just make an observation that invites input but doesn't require it—it doesn't force you."

He says nothing. 

She files that away. "I want you to assume, when I ask a question, that I want you to answer if and only if, assuming you didn't have to prioritize my desires, you would _choose_ to answer. Okay?" 

At first, he doesn't speak, and she thinks they've got it. At last. Finally. But then he chokes out, "Yes. Yes, very well." 

"What was wrong with _that_ one?" 

"N-nothing."

And they're back to forcing him to lie. Great. "I _mean_ , in what way did the wording not accomplish my goal of giving you freedom of speech?"

"It would seem thus far," he replies, "whenever you express a new desire, if it conflicts with a previously expressed desire, the new overwrites the old, except in cases when the compulsion won't allow changes to be made in the first place."

"Such as when I express displeasure this compulsion even exists."

"Yes."

"In which case, you suffer paroxysms, because you can't fulfill my wildest dreams despite ‘wanting’ to. A catch-22."

"So it would seem."

"So, when I said, 'Okay?' before, I was essentially replacing my desire to allow you to choose whether to answer, with my desire to know what you thought about that."

"I … believe so."

Wait. "What if I just prioritized?"

"I'm …." He shifts, his body tensing. "I-I don't …."

"Never mind," she rushes to say, and his taut posture eases. He's exhausted and beset. Of course he'd be too fried to make these leaps with her. "I mean, I want you to be able to speak or not speak whenever you would choose to, assuming you were allowed to prioritize your choices over mine, and I _always_ want that _more_ than I want you to respond to my desire for knowledge, or my desire to hear you talk, or my desire to hear you say specific things." She pauses. Lets that sink in. " _Now_ , do you still have to answer me?" 

Blessed, beautiful silence. He sucks in a sharp breath, but not this time, she thinks, from the compulsion kicking in. Just relief-borne shock that he doesn't have to respond. 

Thank. Fucking. _God_.

"And when you do speak," she continues, "assuming you were allowed to prioritize your choices over mine, I _always_ want you to say _only_ what you would choose to say, with whatever tone and attitude you would choose to say it, whether that be ungrateful, or contrary, or negative, or lying—I mean, not that I expect you to lie, just … lying from the perspective of this yay-everything's-great compulsion—or _whatever_."

He still seems fine.

"In fact," she adds, emboldened, "I _always_ want you to do or not do only what you would choose, assuming you were allowed to prioritize your choices over mine."

A moan rips his throat, and he sags to the left, into the lamp, knocking it into the wall. 

"I misspoke, damn it! Forget that one!"

He slides to his knees to the floor, suddenly boneless, wrung out all over again, swaying like little cartoon birdies and stars are circling his head.

"I guess that one was a little too close to, 'Be free.'" Fuck.

"… What?" he croaks. "What … happened?"

Like she'd stripped the memory from him with her outburst. Fuck, she probably had. "I said something that hurt you again," she admits, the words thick. "And then I made you forget it by accident. Sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't—" 

"I appreciate that you're trying," he rasps when he gathers his scattered wits. He's shivering again. "But … p-perhaps … allow me to rest a spot before you attempt further language experiments in the name of my freedom." And then he adds much more softly, "Please."

"Sure. Sorry."

He rubs his bloodshot eyes. And then he looses a tiny, curdled sigh before looking away from her. He's barefoot, still wrapped only in her wool afghan, she realizes. 

"You do still want actual clothes, right?" she asks. 

"Please." The soft, begging edge to the word seems vulgar in this context. He shouldn't have to beg for clothes.

"I want you to wear whatever you would choose to wear," she tries before she loses the nerve to continue, her stomach writhing like caffeinated snakes, "whenever you would choose to wear it, assuming you—" 

"No!" he snaps, tensing up. 

"I take it back!" 

He sags against the wall, swallowing, sweating at his temples. He squeezes his eyes shut like he's dizzy. His shoulders curl inward. 

Stress crashes through her. "What did I say wrong that time?" 

"It's only …." He gathers himself, giving her a plaintive look. "If I weren't in this predicament, I wouldn't bloody choose Daniel's horrendous Fruit-of-the-Loom castoffs; I'd choose something from my own wardrobe. I'd choose something that's _mine_."

"Your wardrobe."

"Yes." 

"Like … the one in Hell."

"I am the Devil, Chloe," he tells her with a sad smile. "That's where I've my belongings. Or, at least, it would stand to reason. Given the amnesia sitch, I can't be certain."

She thinks of him landing earlier, contorting, gasping, screaming until she calmed him with a touch. "And you leaving for Hell right now would be"—she swallows—"bad." Catastrophic, even. 

He lets her assessment sit there, unanswered, which seems answer enough.

"What happened earlier?" she asks. "When you came back after you left."

He peers at the floor. "Given Beatrice's existence, I'm … assuming you've had an orgasm at some point. Please, tell me Daniel's not so inept as he looks."

"Hey, he's not inept," she protests.

"So, you're familiar with that split second just before the peak, when you would do anything—say anything—to feel your release? To finish?"

Admittedly not something she's experienced in a while, but, "Yeah …."

"You might grab for the sheets. Or your partner's hair. Or a hand. Your back might arch as you fall into the grips of sensation. You might moan. Or whine. Or plead with your partner to help you. Anything to push you over the edge you're straddling."

"Where are you going with this?"

"That's what it feels like when you make a request of me," Lucifer admits. "Fulfilling your desire becomes that … last lovely caress I need to orgasm. Only multiply that sensation by the number of times a politician has gone to Hell. It's excruciating, not pleasurable. And then realize there _is_ no orgasm at the end. When I give you the thing you desire, the feeling simply fades."

"That's how you feel any time I command you?" 

"Not pain, precisely. Only need so acute it might as well be called agony."

The bulge in his pants earlier suddenly makes all-too-painful sense. No wonder he's exhausted and snappish.

"After I departed earlier," he continues, "I needed to return to you. I _needed_ it, as badly as if you'd asked me directly. I've never needed anything so intensely in my whole bloody life, and that's quite a long life we happen to be discussing." He laughs, though the sound isn't happy. "The feeling was _so_ intense, my considerable attempts to ignore it proved fruitless. Then when I bloody got here, I couldn't touch you. I would have done _anything_ —lied, killed, subjugated, worshipped Dad—yet I couldn't do the one thing I needed, because you'd expressed no actual desire for it. And when you did touch me, it all simply … went away. No satisfaction, no resolution, no sense of completion. It was just gone, ripped out from under me like a flimsy rug."

"Lucifer …."

"Worse, I'm not certain if the situation resulted from me having nothing to do after I completed the task of leaving—can't have an idle bloody slave, after all—or from my lack of proximity to you, or from some unique combination thereof, or something else entirely, and …."

His earlier terror at the prospect of her leaving carves her out like a knife. "And," she says, sinking, "you're afraid to test it right now." 

His gaze is dark and rankled when he replies, "If you order me, I _will_ do it, even knowing what will result."

"I wouldn't," she assures him again. "Lucifer, I would _never_ send you somewhere against your will."

"You almost did, once."

Father Kinley's poison vial sears her mind's eye again like a solar eclipse. "Well, I was stupid, then," she snaps. "I was tragically stupid, Lucifer. And I'll be sorry about it for the rest of my life. I've already apologized. I don't know what else I can say."

"Nothing," he says. "I'm … Detective, I'm …." He closes his eyes, exhaling. "I'd no intention of making it sound as though I desire further apology from you—I do not; all is forgiven. I only meant, even with the most angelic of intentions …." He trails away. 

She looks at her feet. Even with the most angelic of intentions, she's been hurting him all morning. She's been torturing him. "I would be terrified right now, too," she admits. "Even if you were the one holding my reins, and you've _never_ —" Betrayed me. Never. He's been a massive commitment-phobic, clueless, idiot, tone-deaf _tool_ , at times, but he's always, _always_ had her back when he's been around. When it's counted. Always. He's loyal to a literal goddamned fault. And, yet, knowing she couldn't do anything without him choosing her actions for her would be …. "You don't have to explain to me."

"Yes, well."

The silence stretches. Neither speaks. 

Her eyes are burning. Her throat aches. She sniffs, trying to hold it all back, but she feels a bit like a dam trying to stop a tsunami. But … clothes. Clothes. They need to get him some clothes he would actually be comfortable retrieving. Which leaves … not a lot of options right now.

"I could take you to Lux?" she suggests. "For clothes, I mean."

"Lux is empty. Simon will have sold everything in it by now."

"Who's Simon?"

"Simon Pentaghast. My executor. I left him instructions to liquidate all but my most valued real estate."

Well, fuck. 

Lucifer looses another unhappy laugh. "Of course when the Devil's feeling modest for once in his bloody long lifetime, it's turning into bloody rocket science to allow him to clothe himself."

"It's different when you can't choose for yourself how much to reveal," she says. "When you have to ask me for every little thing. It's _awful_."

His back arches as he looses a sharp, distressed gasp. 

"I mean, I love it!" As he relaxes, she can't stop herself from crying anymore. She just can't. "Sorry. Don't comfort me."

"This is bollocks," Lucifer snaps, "and whoever's done it deserves a lifetime bound in bloody chains, assuming they live through me eviscerating them when I find them." He glances at Chloe. "I'm assuming I've permission when I do."

"At least we've got it so _you_ can bitch now, even if I can't." She offers him a watery smile.

His responding glower speaks opuses for him.

"We'll figure it out," she continues, coughing to clear the grief from her throat. "And we'll free you. We will." She's not sure who she's trying to convince. "We can go to a department store when you're feeling up to it." But … that doesn't solve the problem now. 

He doesn't bother to comment. Like he's tired. Just … tired. Of everything.

"I want you to wear or not wear clothes whenever you desire," Chloe says, thinking, "assuming you were allowed to prioritize your desires over mine, and when you do opt to wear clothes, assuming you were allowed to prioritize your choices over mine, I want you to select those clothes by picking from within my closet whatever apparel is the least objectionable to you." She frowns. "Does that work?"

Lucifer climbs to his feet and pushes away from the wall. "I suppose we'll see if I get caught in an infinite loop whilst trying to don a hoodie or some such." The words are empty of snark. Just glum.

"At least you can yell now if you get stuck," she says too brightly, cringing as soon as the words are out of her mouth. God. Speaking of tone-dea— 

"Detective."

"Yeah?"

"If it's of any consolation, of all the people on Earth, in Heaven, in Hell, or anywhere else in the bloody Dadforsaken multiverse, if I'm to be at the bloody beck and call of _someone_ , I'm more than grateful that person is you."

Her heart constricts. "Oh."

And then he resumes his weary, slow slog to her closet.

* * *

"Unless you intend for me to attempt slipping into one of your dresses, I think perhaps you might wish to revise your command again," he calls minutes later, his words dripping with unrestrained consternation.

Fuck. "Um." What had she said before? Fuck, she needs to start writing these down. She grabs her iPad off the edge of the couch, opens a new note, and starts dictation mode, rambling through the basic equivalent of what she'd said previously, except adding, "Whatever clothes are least objectionable to you … _and would actually fit you_." She waits. "That good?"

He doesn't retort. She'll take that as a win. 

"I'd," he says thickly after a minute, "I'd like to return now. Please."

"Sure!" she calls back.

A pause. "I … Detective," he admits, miserable, "I seem to require a bit more directness than that."

"Lucifer, I'd like you to return to me."

In moments, he appears at the top of the steps, barefoot, donning an old coffee-stained red sweatshirt and a set of black nylon warmup pants. The red brings out the what seems to be perpetual hue of embarrassment flushing his face. Shakily, he descends the steps, looking tired and cowed and frail. 

"I was thinking," she says hesitantly as he halts in front of her. She gestures to the couch and adds, "If you want to sit, assuming you were allowed to prioritize your wants above mine." As he sinks onto the cushion beside her, she continues, starting a new note on her iPad, "For simplicity's sake, whenever I reference what you'd like, love, prefer, want, desire, need, or choose, I want you to take that specifically to mean what you'd like, love, prefer, want, desire, need, or choose if you didn't have to prioritize what I like, love, prefer, want, desire, need, or choose, respectively."

"Very well." His words are quiet. Almost … inaudible.

He remains beside her, stiff as a board, staring straight ahead instead of at her. 

"Lucifer, when you said you had some leeway before …."

"I seem to be able to do small things," he admits with a slight nod. "Subconscious and unconscious things. Small deviations of conscious action as long as they serve in the spirit of fulfilling your desires. But the moment I would stray from your general intent, it's"—his lower lip trembles before he hides it with a grimace—"impossible."

She considers the many times he's crumpled to the ground in torment—an unconscious action—and then not been able to get up again when his predicament passed back from hindbrain to forebrain. "So, if I told you to go over there …?" She gestures vaguely at the ravaged kitchen.

"I could walk, trot, fly, leap, or crawl, with a mildly circuitous route, and then I would have to stay there until you released me, I'd imagine."

"But you could fidget a little and talk."

"Yes."

"But if I told you to hold still …?"

"I doubt I could do more than blink and breathe."

"Can you get up right now?"

His lips are a grim line. "No."

"Can you move your limbs? Turn your head?"

"I imagine if I wasn't thinking specifically about it, I could, since doing so wouldn't violate your intention for me to sit, but …." But now that she's planted the suggestion in his head—made him aware—she's stripped him of that option. 

"God, Lucifer, that's …." Unconscionable, she wants to say. Except that would punish him. Offering him freedom to move about as he desires is definitely the next knot of semantics to untangle, but—

"Please, no," he interrupts quietly. "Please, no more."

"You don't want me to give you freedom of movement?"

"I'm …." His eyes grow wet. "I don't want to hurt. I don't want to _need_." His chest quivers as he sucks in a breath, and another. And the fact he would rather be immobilized right now, _trapped_ , rather than risk fishing for more freedom …. "Detective, I'm knackered."

"Oh. Oh, Lucifer." She scrambles to her feet, leaving her iPad on the coffee table. "Do you want to use my bed?"

He scowls. "If you order me to choose, that's where I'll likely go."

Like what happened with choosing his clothes, acting as if he were allowed choices changes his choice entirely. And now she feels stupid for even asking. Of course he wouldn't want to sleep in her bed right now. 

His shame is a thick, pervasive pall. 

"I get it," she says softly. "The couch until I can clear the boxes out of the spare bedroom?"

"What else is left?" he laments. "Your child occupies the only other option, does she not?"

"Right, sorry." Stupid, stupid. "Let me get you a blanket." She waves at him as she reaches the steps. "Lie down, if you want."

* * *

He's staring at the ceiling, bleary-eyed and empty, when she returns with a fluffy down comforter and two pillows for him. 

"You didn't have to wait for me to come back," she says. "You could have gone to sleep."

"No, I couldn't have."

"Jesus, it won't even let you sleep without my say?" She drapes the folded blanket across his lap and hands him the pillows with a softly added, "Put those where you want them."

"Not until I'm so bloody exhausted I can't help it, I'd imagine," he says, spreading the blanket and propping the pillows before directing a wary look toward the front door. "Is the spawn …?"

"Dan's dropping her off tomorrow evening," Chloe says. "I'd ask him to keep her longer, but he's flying on the red-eye to Miami. He's going to visit his mother."

"Detective … please, don't …." Lucifer clutches the edges of the blanket. "Please, don't tell them of my …." He swallows. "Please, don't tell _anyone else_. Please."

"I promise." She reaches for his shoulder, pausing millimeters from Dan's soft sweatshirt. 

Lucifer grasps her hand before she can figure out how to ask to touch him—maybe reaching for him was a cue he could twist a little to his own purposes. His icy fingers clutch at her knuckles, squeezing. His pleading look rips her into pieces. 

"I _promise_ ," she repeats, trying to reassure him. "We'll figure this out after you've rested. I'll move Heaven and Earth. I don't care what it takes."

"At the very least," he replies bitterly, "I suppose you could command me to move them _for_ you."

"I wouldn't do that."

Silent, he tips his gaze away. 

"Lucifer, I want you to—" She realizes she almost either knocked him out or got him punished, since sleep isn't normally immediate. Also, she didn't dictate to her notes. Her eyes water as she gives him an apologetic look, fumbling yet again for her iPad. "Lucifer, I want you to be awake or asleep whenever you choose, and I want you to have as much time as you need to transition between these two states."

He closes his eyes and takes a deep, dragging breath. 

She leaves him be.


	5. "Rip the Band-Aid"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everybody for the lovely feedback :) It's been great to see your reactions as you read!

He sleeps. For the rest of the afternoon. 

Not like Sleeping Beauty. Not like some angel. In deep sleep, he's motionless, but his thick breaths are aggressively even. Whenever he cycles into REM sleep, his limbs twitch, and his eyeballs track back and forth underneath his eyelids. He mutters guttural things in a language she doesn't understand. 

The Devil dreams. 

Which she knew—she's seen him sleep any number of times. Yet she'd never stopped to marvel before. That Satan, King of Hell, snores occasionally, has unflattering muscle spasms, and drools on his pillow. 

She spends the afternoon and early evening cleaning up her ruined kitchen, researching new kitchen appliances, and looking up reviews for kitchen restoration specialists. Even a specialist probably won't be able to do much with pulverized tile, but a consultation couldn't hurt. All the better if she can miraculously get the kitchen fixed before her landlord notices there was an issue. 

She crashes early. 

Dreams fitfully.

The seagulls screaming outside her window Sunday morning yank her awake. She has an irritated moment of non comprehension, recent slumber hanging like a spiderweb over her consciousness, and then she realizes. 

She left Lucifer trapped on the couch for almost eighteen hours with no food and no water, unable to get up and use the bathroom if he needs—if he even needs that sort of thing, though one would assume from the muscle spasms and the snoring and the drool, that his needs are far more human than not, at least when he's around her.

She darts out of bed, almost falling on her face when her left ankle gets caught in the sheets. Her brain misfires, and she stumbles into her dresser, into the nightstand, until she catches herself against the wall. Racing into the hall, she thunders down the steps, only to skid to a stop once she rounds the corner. He's not staring desperately at the staircase, waiting for her to wake and release him—he's back to REM sleep, twitching and drooling and muttering. 

Eighteen hours, and he's still asleep, when he can stay awake for weeks at a time.

"Knackered" seems to have been an understatement.

She heads into the smote remains of her kitchen. She has no coffee to offer him—he'd slagged her coffee maker—but she does have a bottle of scotch, leftover from one of his previous visits. She pours him a mugful and puts the glass on a little breakfast tray next to a spoon, a glass of milk, and a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. 

She tries to be quiet, but the spoon clanks against the glass when she sets the tray onto the coffee table beside him. He snaps awake. 

Fuck. "Um … hi," she says.

His fuzzy-but-neutral expression lasts less than a blink before it sinks like a stone. "Oh, I was hoping it was a bloody nightmare, but it's bloody well not." 

"I know." She lowers herself to her knees beside the couch. "I know you were." _Me, too_ , she can't say without punishing him. To vent stress, she digs her fingernails deep into the grain of the area carpet, instead. The scraping noise fills the quiet.

He doesn't move. Doesn't speak. 

"Are you going back to sleep?" she whispers.

"No. I'm wallowing. I can bloody do that, at least."

"Can I try to make it so you can get off the couch under your own power, or are you not ready for—" No. Bad wording. "I mean, I'm thinking about trying to—"

"Get on with it then," he says tiredly. 

She gives him a sympathetic wince. "Rip the Band-Aid, huh."

"Somewhat, I suppose, yes."

She sets her iPad up for dictation again. "Lucifer, I want you to have freedom of movement."

The harrowed, low-pitched moan he exhales as his body arches backward makes her stomach clench. "Never mind!" she's quick to say. 

He sinks down, wrung out already, and he's only been awake for a few minutes. "Perhaps I'm bloody _intended_ to be your posable bloody—"

"No," she snaps. He clamps his mouth shut. Fuck, fuck, fuck. "I-I didn't mean that as a command to shut up. I didn't, Lucifer. I …." Fuck. "I only meant to disagree, not shut you up." He glares at the ceiling, looking like he wants to smite her ceiling fan, too, to give her refrigerator company in Hell. "I mean … never mind the 'no.'" 

"This is," he says, "taxing."

"I know," she replies softly, trying to collect herself. "But the rest has been a maze of semantics. We can figure this out, too." 

She shifts off her knees to her butt and tries a few more things, each attempt leaving him more exhausted and despondent than the last. Limiting him to freedom within a small radius around her doesn't work. Limiting him to freedom within her apartment doesn't work either. 

So, maybe the problem isn't distance alone.

She thinks of her obliterated kitchen.

What if the compulsion inherently catch-22s whenever she suggests something that would enable him to harm her? 

He could, through the objective eyes of this compulsion, plow right over her if he had freedom of movement. He could murderher. He has free access to two massiveweapons. Hell, even without wings, he's strong enough to snap her neck.

Not that he would ever hurt her on purpose.

But he _could_.

Which might be enough for the compulsion to exist in a constant state of refusal. 

"Lucifer, I'm gonna try one more thing," she warns him.

"Very well," he says glumly. 

But this is not very well. _He's_ not well. 

And she _has_ to make this stick. 

She aims low.

"Lucifer, barring instances where your movement would carry you through or into any physical obstruction, or where your movement could harm me or jeopardize my safety, I want you to move or not move whenever, however, and wherever you would choose, as long as this movement occurs within a fifty-foot radius of me."

The silence stretches as she holds her breath, waiting. Hoping. He slings his trembling arm forward, grabbing at the air above his right knee, and then sits up without any direction from her. 

"Oh, thank God," she gushes, only for him to give her a look. "Would you accept, 'thank Satan?'" 

"If you must," he croaks as he swings his legs off the couch, blankets rustling as he moves, and sits hunched over his knees, staring at nothing. 

"Beyond the obvious issu— _delight_ —are you okay?" she asks. They haven't even really had a chance to _talk_ yet, only navigate from crisis to crisis to crisis. "How are you?" 

His gaze drifts dully to the breakfast tray she prepped for him. 

"Are you hungry?" she prods. 

He draws a shaking hand to his face, stopping just short of the reddening skin that caps the bridge of his nose. He barks with upset laughter. "Well, I can bloody move now."

"Why are you making it sound like that's bad?"

He doesn't answer, instead peering over his fingers at the tray again, at the Cheerios and the scotch. The tip of his tongue pops briefly into view as he licks his lower lip. He stares with the focus of someone who's been half starved to death. Maybe he was.

She nudges the tray toward him, but that only results in him clutching at the edges, staring with unslaked desire.

"I'd," he says, "like a drink."

"Oh." _Oh._ Guilt creeps like a clinging vine. "Seriously, freedom of movement doesn't comprise freedom to interact with things?"

"Yes," he snarks, "who would ever believe a compulsion that doesn't allow me to move without your express approval would be so granular?"

She counts internally to five, willing herself not to snap at him. "Well, then," she grits out, "I want you to be able to use or not use, touch or not touch, consume or not consume, anything you would choose to, however, whenever, and wherever you would choose to do so, so long as this touch, use, consumption, or lack thereof wouldn't harm me or jeopardize my safety, and would occur within a fifty-foot radius of me."

His face sinks against his hands as though he were leaning on a plate of glass that suddenly disappeared. He grunts, surprised, before sinking further into the motion, twisting, contorting his shoulders and upper back like he's been dying to stretch for days, but couldn't. 

"I suppose this is proof," he says darkly.

"Of?"

"That you own the Devil, and that I am considered a 'thing.'" He reaches for the shot glass she's left him and downs it in a gulp before she can reply, his eyes crinkling as soon as the liquid hits his tongue. "Oh, that's bloody good."

"Lucifer—"

"Have you any more?"

"Yeah," she says, chest tightening. "In the kitch—" 

He zips into her divinity-blasted kitchen, yanks open her liquor cabinet, finds the scotch bottle in question, uncaps it, and tips it back to glug down four more swallows. His hands shake, like he's desperate, like he's _ravenous_. 

"Love me a smooth single malt," he explains, peering at her sidelong as she approaches. A glutted little sigh escapes him. 

"They … don't have scotch in Hell?" she asks.

"Hell isn't precisely known for its distilleries—what's in the loops tastes like liquid guilt, like _ash_. All I've had in millennia is feckless swill."

She blinks. "Um. Millennia?"

"Time is … different in Hell." 

"Different how, exactly?"

"Time moves more quickly," he explains. "Everywhere in Hell, really, but especially in the cells. All the better to stretch out eternity, I suppose. Millennia, crammed into months."

"You're telling me you remember?"

He sets the bottle onto the cracked countertop. "No."

"But—"

"I've no memory of the time elapsed. Only …." He strokes the scotch bottle. "It's like déjà vu. A feeling."

"But you're telling me you're not just missing months, that you're missing … that there's a millennia-whatever-wide hole in your head?"

"Unless I've not been in Hell," he offers with a tense laugh. "You did insist I shouldn't make assumptions like that, after all."

Except he's clutching his old bottle of scotch like a life raft, insisting he hasn't tasted anything similar since at least before the time of Jesus. 

"I'm," she says, "I'm really thinking it might be wise to talk to Linda about this. Like … now."

"Why?" he scoffs. "So she can gawk at the Devil, enslaved?"

"No, so she can help you _remember_. So we can piece together what the hell happened to you. You don't need to tell her about the compulsion if you don't want, but, Lucifer, something is _wrong_ with you."

"Isn't that what they all say." He sneers, and then he moans. The bottle cracks, spiderweb patterns snaking across the glass.

"I don't mean you have a deficiency in your character," she rushes to correct herself, and he sinks against the counter. "I mean beyond whatever metaphysical _craziness_ has happened, you have a legitimate health concern, and the longer we let this go without attempting to address it, the worse it could be getting. You don't leave wounds to fester. I would imagine it's the same for … for … whatever the hell this is."

"Yes, well." He turns away. 

"Look," she presses, "I know this is scary, but—"

"I am _not_ frightened!"

"Okay."

"I'm"—he shifts in place like a ruffled peacock—"I am not."

"Okay, I misspoke," she's quick to agree. "Lucifer, I misspoke, but … please, let's get you some help. _Please_."

He sways back and forth, stiff, stubborn, silent, glaring before encroaching desire eclipses annoyance. He crumples against the counter with a strangled, protesting little, "No," that frays all her heartstrings, making her realize what she's done to him. 

Again. 

What she's done to him _again_.

"Never mind; you don't need help!" Fuck. Fuck,fuckfuckfuuuuuuck. She rests a hand against his quivering back, only for his eyes to blow wide. 

"No!" he gasps out again. 

The word is so shivery it makes him sound inches away from losing consciousness. She skitters backward, giving him space, but his balance is already off, and his arms are deadweights. His legs are deadweights. He drops to the floor in a limp heap, tipping the scotch bottle into the sink in the process. Luckily, the glass doesn't shatter. 

"I'm sorry!" she blurts. "I didn't mean to touch you there. I wasn't thinking." His breaths are raspy, labored, panicked. And he's been awake less than thirty fucking minutes. "I'll leave you alon—" 

"I can't move again," he says faintly.

"What?"

"Exactly what I bloody said," he grits out. "I can't bloody _move_ again!"

"But what happened?"

"You _touched_ me," he accuses, "and I needed"—he swallows, fading again—"I c-couldn't." 

Move.

He couldn't move, because her touching him is essentially the verbal equivalent of, _I want to touch you_. A desire. A desire that he hold still while she partakes in physically appraising him. Which, of course, overwrote freedom of movement.

"I couldn't," he repeats, his pallor draining. Like his brief, sweet taste of almost-freedom was enough to make losing control of himself again worse than never having any control at all. His gaze spaces out. And then he adds in a tiny voice, "Please, let me up."

"I … I-I …." What the hell command had she used? What the—

"Please, let me up, Detective," he begs faintly. " _Please_."

She glances at her iPad on the distant coffee table. But … she can remember this one, maybe. She repeats her previous desire for his freedom of movement, this time adding, "and I always absolutely want that more than anything else ever." 

He bolts out of the room, only to snap to a halt in the hallway on the welcome mat, where he froths and paces and glares.

"I can't open the bloody door!" he snaps. He hitches toward the end table where she leaves her purse and keys, but stops before his fingers can brush the haphazard pile of envelopes and magazines. He reaches for his hair like he wants to yank on it in frustration, but he's foiled, then, too. "I can't …."

Touching his back. Touching his back must have ruined things in a cascade, canceling anything related: touch requires movement. She rattles off a version of what she'd said before, allowing him freedom to interact with things. 

The front door snaps backward on its hinges, banging into the stop and vibrating, and then he's gone.

He's _gone_.

The rapidity of his departure makes her stomach swoop, but she forces herself to take a breath. 

He didn't leave her again. 

He just needs some air.

She closes the front door, careful to leave it unlocked for him. An engaged lock—meaning, _I don't want you to enter this way_ —would probably screw everything up again, at least on the use/touch/consume front, since she didn't prioritize that, and … and …. 

He didn't leave her again.

He did _not_ leave her again.

He's having a crisis. He's hurt, and he's scared—whether he'll admit it or not. He's powerless. 

Lucifer the Morningstar doesn't _do_ powerless. 

Of course he needs air. 

He's probably sitting in the quad, watching the clouds pass by for a bit, calming down and clearing his head. 

She won't be party to infringing on what little space he still has to himself. 

Or so she keeps telling herself, trying to stave off another crash of guilt, as her eyes water over, and over, and over again. 

* * *

After she updates her iPad notes with the new priority for the movement command, she busies herself cleaning Maze's old room. 

The morning sunlight filters through the slats in the blinds, striping the bedspread with bright bars. Dust covers the floral-print fabric—a tacky layer that dirties her fingertips when she brushes the blanket. The room is stacked high with boxes, papers, and summer clothes that haven't been put into storage for the year.

Her summer—since he left her—had disappeared. She'd worked. She'd cared for Trixie. Everything else, she'd added to the stack for "later." Later. When she wasn't drifting through a tired, aching fog.

With a sniff, she grabs the first box, pulling it across the hardwood floor, grunting at its unexpected weight. She pulls off the lid. A lump forms in her throat. Books. A pile of them. _The World's Religions. Why I am not a Christian. Why I am Catholic (and You Should Be Too). A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Satan: How God's Executioner Became the Enemy. The Historical and Theological Evolution of Satan, the Devil, and Hell._ Title after title. Book after book on theology and religion and the formation of myth. Everything she'd scrambled to read after realizing Father Kinley was the demagogue, not Lucifer. 

She shivers, putting the lid back on the box before taping it shut. She marks the lid DONATE TO LIBRARY with a squeaky red marker, and then shoves the box out into the hallway. One box down. Only about forty billion to go. 

Great.

* * *

The sunlight shifts across the bedspread until it spills onto the floor, forming a bright puddle on the dusty hardwood. The pile of boxes stacked outside in the hallway has grown from one box to five. The bedroom looks no better, though. She's freed barely more than half of the queen-sized bed from clutter, let alone the floors or the closet. 

The mattress sinks with his weight as he sits beside her. 

She doesn't look up. "Just trying to clear this stuff out of here before tonight," she tells him, her voice quavering. "So you'll have somewhere to sleep, yeah?"

"Shall I take the boxes not marked for the library out to the wheelie bins?" His words are edged with tension, like he's barely curtailing himself from moaning.

"No, Lucifer. I don't need or want your help with this."

He sags, panting, before inching closer. The heat of his skin presses against her shoulder. Her side. She can almost imagine he's there voluntarily. 

" _Please_ , don't comfort me right now," she rasps when he tries to pull her close. "I can't handle it." 

He draws away without a word.

She presents her back to him, digging into the nearest pile of unsorted papers. Trixie's homework. Projects. Everything that had ever received a grade that year. Mostly As and Bs. Pride expands like a hot-air balloon in her chest. She adds to the ever-growing "save" pile stacking up behind Lucifer.

"You needn't do this," he says softly. "I've lived in far worse places than a cluttered bedroom."

"I'm not just gonna stick you in here like another spare box," she retorts. "That would be …." 

A self-deprecating twitch of his lips almost creates a smile. "Perhaps a bit on the nose with this whole slavery situation." 

"Yes!" she snaps before adding more quietly, " _Yes_ , Lucifer." Her fingers shake as she rubs her nose. "I don't even know what to say that won't—" Degrade him. Upset him. Hurt him. Force him. "Look, the very _least_ I can do right now is give you an actual living space with an actual door you can close." 

"I do appreciate the thought," he says.

She grabs another pile off the bed, noticing a leather … item on the top of the bunch. There are black satin ties. And shiny chrome buckles. Maze must have left it behind. 

His hand hovers over her wrist, close but not touching. "Detective, I wish to call Amenadiel." 

"Seriously?" She tosses the leather whatever-it-is into the return-to-Maze bag that rests, propped open, by the wall. "You won't see your extremely qualified therapist, but you're willing to call your _brother_?"

Lucifer draws his hand away. "Any embarrassment will be worth it, I'm certain, if he can de-hex me immediately. This situation is intolerable."

She pauses, looking up. "You think an angel could de-hex you?"

"Well, I won't bloody know until I ask him, will I?" he huffs. "So—"

"Lucifer … Amenadiel is gone."

"I _know_ that. That's why I wish to call him."

"No, Lucifer, I …." She's sinking. "He's _missing._ "

"Missing," Lucifer parrots.

"I was really upset when you left." She launches herself away from the bed, but she can't pace. She can't _move_. The floor is covered in unsorted junk like a cluster bomb had gone off inside Goodwill. "I begged him to go after you. I _begged_ him, Lucifer."

His fingers clench against the bedspread. "Why?"

"What the hell do you mean, why?" she says. "I love you."

"I only meant, what would have been the point in sending him after me?"

Oh. "He said it was silly for you to shoulder the burden of Hell alone." 

"He"—Lucifer cocks his head to the side—" _what_?"

"As soon as I heard him even musing about it, I broke into pieces on him." _Please,_ she'd cried. _Please, Amenadiel, will you go?_ One blink with her burning eyes, and the room blurs a little. "I'm … I'm not proud of it." She holds up a hand as Lucifer starts to rise. "Don't comfort me." 

He sits down. "I … I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?"

"Heard him musing about _what_?" Lucifer asks.

"He was going to offer to help you. Take … shifts with you or something. Or so he said. Except he went and never came back. He's been missing almost as long as you've been gone. I didn't think we'd ever see either of you again. Ever. And we didn't even know why."

"I … I don't remember," Lucifer says, his brow furrowing. "I don't bloody remember any of this. I don't even remember leaving."

She rubs her eyes. "What _is_ the last thing you remember?"

"How you tasted," he confesses, giving her a sad look. "How I didn't want to go. Detective, I truly didn't _want_ to, but—"

"I know," she says, sniffling. With a shivering breath, she drops back onto the bed, folding her arms across her chest like she's cold. "I know you thought you were protecting people. Protecting me. I admire the sentiment."

But she doesn't have to _like_ the sentiment. She doesn't have to appreciate that, yet again, he employed unilateral decision-making, resulting in her abandonment. She doesn't have to excuse him for it, either. 

He looks like he wants to throw up.

"Lucifer, I don't want you to take this next statement as an order, because it's not. It's _not_." She braces herself for another explosion. "But, please, _please_ see Linda." 

He doesn't explode. He doesn't even twitch. "Amenadiel really wanted to help me?"

"Of course he did," she murmurs. "You think he would have let you spend millennia in Hell alone while he traipsed around Scot-free and reaped the fruits of your labor?"

Lucifer stares at his knees. "Detective, you've just told the story of my life—with my entire bloody family, Amenadiel included—until I gave up trying to please them."

The swaying palm tree by her window creaks, the leaves soughing. A bird chirps nearby, shrill in the small, sunlit space. Her chest aches, and her face feels hot and scratchy.

"Please," Lucifer adds quietly, "allow me to pray to him?"

"I want you to pray to _anyone_ whenever you want." 

He folds his hands together and closes his eyes. 

The minutes pass. 

"Anything?" she asks when he lowers his hands.

"It's not like a phone, Detective. I've no ability to discern whether he's 'picked up,' so to speak, though I admit it is"—he grimaces—"a bit unusual for him not to answer immediately."

"Can I pray to him, too?" She feels silly for not having thought of the option before. 

"Human prayers are a lot less distinct. He'd have to consciously tune into you to hear you."

She sniffs. "What, so humans are like gnats to you guys?"

"Well, it's not as though _I_ designed the mechanics," Lucifer replies with a derisive snort, his fingers brushing his chest in a graceful who-me gesture. With a furtive, leading glance, he turns to face her. "This is so … constricting. I keep feeling as though I'm a breath away from strangling."

"Lucifer, I'm so sor—"

"Forget I said that, please," he's quick to say, holding up a hand. "I realize you're as much the victim in this situation as I am. When I told you I trust you, I meant it. You needn't apologize to me for every little flash of pain caused. This is"—he pauses, searching for words—"a learning process for us both." 

"Always the truth," she whispers, remembering.

" _Always_ , Detective." He reaches for her again, stopping just short of her shoulder. The heat of his skin soaks through her shirt. "I may … show frustration—perhaps worse—but I promise you, none of my ire over this situation is directed at you."

His offering of absolution is a balm. She sucks in a shaky breath, her lower lip trembling as her internal tsunami threatens again to break the dam. "Thank you, I … thanks." She'd needed that.

He nods.

 _Forget I said that,_ she'd rushed to tell him in the wake of creating a catch-22 for him. A desire that he be able to ignore her questions. A desire he couldn't fulfill. Forget, she commanded, and his response had been both sweeping and immediate. His whole personality is malleable right now, if she were to pick up a hammer and sculpt. 

"Lucifer … is it possible you were compelled to forget?"

"Don't be silly."

" _Is_ it silly? Who's to say Lilith, or whoever held you captive before, didn't intentionally command you to forget the experience?"

His face pales. "No."

"Lucifer …."

" _No_. That isn't—no."

The whip marks all over his skin haunt her mind. The knife wound. The brand. Without thinking, she grabs his palms and squeezes, but he flinches like she scalded him. 

" _Don't_ make me," he grits out, backing away until he almost hits the wall, and then he freezes in place. "Don't."

"I'm not gonna make you do anything," she rushes to assure him. "Lucifer, I wouldn't. Not without your okay, first. I mean, I was _suggesting_ Linda, because—"

"I've no wish to see Doctor Linda," he snaps.

"But … what if—"

His lips pull back into an almost feral snarl. 

She holds up her hands. "Okay. Okay, it's okay. I promise, it's okay." He grimaces like at first her words are hurting him, but then his panic seems to flow out of him like water through a sieve. "I swear, I'm not gonna make you do anything against your will. I'm not gonna tell you to remember if you don't want me to. It's okay."

He heaves a relaxed-sounding sigh and returns to the bed, but he stops short of her knee, short of the edge of the mattress, peering down with a peculiar, blank expression. 

"Did I mess something up again?" she asks.

"You've prioritized my freedom of movement above all else, which I believe now renders my ability to pull away after you've touched me unassailable." He tries to touch the bedspread but stops short, hovering millimeters above it. "You do seem to have botched my ability to choose whether to initiate touch, though. I assume you'll fix it?"

She watches him idly run his palm along a pocket of air surrounding the bed. "You've been doing that with me, even before I messed it all up again."

"Your original command didn't allow me to touch people; only things. That's my speculation, anyway." He snickers. "Given I'm allowed to touch _myself_."

She feels a bit like she missed a memo somewhere. 

"Double entendre intended, of course," he continues.

Which … how had he gone from panic … to this? Joking. Sniggering. In a manner of seconds? She laughs warily. Tension and angst successfully chopped out of the equation, at least. "Thanks."

His grin widens. "Always, Detective."

She rattles off a replacement for the touch command, this time adding the stipulation that she desires his ability to use/touch/consume whoever or whatever he chooses, even after he's subjected to touch he didn't choose. Success. 

"Really, Detective?" he says, gaze glinting. "I can use or consume _anyone?_ "

She rolls her eyes. "I don't think the compulsion gives a crap if it doesn't make sense as long as it's technically possible, and it saves me from having to—"

"Oh, I think it makes perfect sense, darling."

She makes a face. "Gross."

Which only seems to delight him more. 

At least, she's getting the hang of this. Of the necessary prioritization and required wording to give him freedom without punishment. 

They share a long, warm look. A subtle flash of tongue parts his lips as he licks them, the chasm between him and her shrinking by degrees. She clenches her fists against her thighs to keep from reaching across the bedspread to touch his knee. Or his face. Or anything. 

"I'm sorry I pressured you," she says, the words dribbling out of her like spit from a bell-rung boxer. 

"Oh, just bloody do it, will you?" he says out of the blue, his words blasé. "Command me to remember."

"Um." She blinks. "What?"

"Make me remember, Detective," he enunciates. 

What. The hell.

"It's okay," he says, a strange, pinched expression on his face. "It seems a prudent tack, given the severity of this situation." He laughs, but the sound is more odd than mirthful. Like he isn't sure what's supposed to be funny. "Truth be told, I don't remember why I was bothered by the idea." 

Warning bells ring like it's Sunday at church. "But—"

"Just do it."

"Lucifer, you're sure?" 

"Yes, yes," he says, waving dismissively at her. "Bloody do it already, will you?"

Something isn't right. Something is _not_ right. 

"This is what _you_ want?" she confirms.

"Of course, Detective."

O … kay, then. "Why?"

"As I have said," he answers through clenched teeth, his smile more a rictus of irritation than anything else, "it's a prudent tack. Now, will you do it, or will you deny me?"

Everything screams at her to refuse him. But what right does she have, exactly? "Lucifer, I want you to remember everything that's happened since we kissed on your balcony."

The birds chirp, and the wind blows, tickling the skin of her neck with cool fingers. He doesn't twitch, or moan, or convulse with yearning. His brow creases. And all he says is a baffled, "Hmm."

"Anything?" 

"Nothing." He relaxes. "Not one bloody glimmer." 

"Doesn't that mean you should be foaming at the mouth? Because you couldn't do what I wanted?"

"I've no idea."

Fuck. "Lucifer, what are we gonna do?"

"I feel like this is probably where I should suggest: 'each other.'" He sounds glum, though, not flirty or gleeful. 

Not _normal_.

She braves the gap and bumps his shoulder with her own. "I'm here."

He doesn't reply. The warmth of his body presses closer, until the edge of his cheek rests against her head. He takes a long, slow breath, like he's scenting her. 

"I'm not making you do that, somehow, am I?" she whispers.

"No, Detective."

She can't see his face, only his knee. His thigh. She doesn't dare move. Doesn't dare speak. Doesn't dare take the chance of doing _anything_ to ruin an interaction he freely offered, despite everything.

"I'll see Linda," he admits softly. 

"… You will?"

"If you're willing to ferry me there." He pulls away with a glum-sounding sigh, leaving her with a bereft, burgeoning ache beneath her sternum. "You're right, of course. It's a logical next step. And I truly can't remember why I …." His voice trails away. He's frowning again.

But she's unwilling to let this opportunity slip away beneath the crush of second thoughts. "I'll call her right now."


	6. "Cat, grasshopper, paperclip"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a smidge earlier than usual since I’m actually still up at midnight—I mean, it's _technically_ Sunday now, right? Thanks so much for the lovely feedback! It’s been a real treat to hear from from everybody! Linda to the rescue? Let’s find out in 3 … 2 … 1 ….

The road rumbles under the car as they cross Wilshire. Cool fall air gusts through the open slits in the windows. The sunlight is muted, casting long afternoon shadows. 

"What should we tell her?" Chloe asks, navigating around a cyclist. 

Lucifer, beside her in the passenger seat, frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Linda," she clarifies. "Are we gonna mention the compulsion to her or …? What's the plan?"

"No."

"No?" She glances at him before returning her eyes to the road. "Just … no?"

"Detective, I've no wish for her to know."

"But … what if that affects the advice she gives? Not showing her the whole picture might—"

"No."

"Look, I don't want to pressure you, but I think—"

The sound of cracking plastic thunders into the space between them, and she flinches, the car jerking in the lane as she yanks on the wheel by accident. He's gripping the broken door handle with a trembling, squeezing fist. _"Please._ No. _"_

His appeal is soft. Hopeless. Cowed. Like he'd gotten used to begging, only to be ignored. 

The sound of him—so unlike the bold and dauntless man she knows—makes her heart twist. She forces herself to count to five in her head. To consider why they're going to Linda's in the first place. 

He showed up in chains. The yellowed skeletons of bruises wrap around his neck and wrists like serpents. His free will had been stolen from him. He'd been _strangled_ —whipped, stabbed, branded. Tortured. Possibly for millennia. Millennia, as in the length of his subjugation might have surpassed the age of Rome. 

Of course he isn't eager to crow about his situation from the rooftops.

"Okay," she concedes, deflating. "Okay, we won't tell her. Not until you're ready. I promise."

His head thumps against the window. He hugs his midsection like he feels sick, but doesn't reply. 

"Are you okay?" she asks. 

"I've no idea why I said yes to this."

She grips the wheel, fingers clenching. "Do you want to turn around? We don't have to go."

But instead of replying, he curls up his knees and pulls himself into a ball against the straining seatbelt—a feat for someone so tall in such a small space.

"Am I somehow making you do this?" she asks. When nothing but silence answers her, she tenses. " _Lucifer_ , am I somehow making you do this?"

"No."

"Do you still have to lie to me when I won't like the real answer?"

"No."

She nods, but her worries continue to swirl. "Are you lying to me anyway?" she asks gently. 

More silence.

"Lucifer?" 

His disturbed, plaintive, "I don't _know_ ,"—truth—sends her spiraling into free fall, but …. 

"Lucifer, if you didn't have to worry about what I want, what would _you_ want to do?"

He has no answer for her but a faint shrug.

"You can say no to this," she assures him. "It's okay for you to say no. I _want_ you to if you're uncomfortable with going." 

But he shakes his head. "Drive, will you?"

"You're _sure_?"

"Drive," he repeats.

Something in her mind is _screaming_. But she can't in good conscience not take him. Not when he won't refuse, no matter how much she prods. Not when he's this damaged. Not when she's bankrupt for other ideas about making this better. The prospect of Linda being able to help is too strong a siren call.

Chloe drives on.

* * *

When Linda opens the front door, her hair is a wild blonde bird's nest, her blotched, tear-stained face bears no makeup, and she's wearing a terrycloth bathrobe covered in spit-up stains. She takes one look at Lucifer, who has a chance to doubtfully observe, "Doctor Linda?" before she grabs him, pulling him into a fierce hug. 

He sucks in a sharp breath and doesn't let it out again, his arms slackening like deadweights by his side. Like some kind of startled play-dead-and-it-will-go-away response. 

"Linda, what's wrong?" Chloe says, trying to intervene. "You can hug _me_ if you want." 

But Linda only scrunches tents of Lucifer's hoodie into her fists while she cries against his chest. 

"Is it Charlie? What—" 

"Please, let me go," Lucifer says, the words reedy and faint. 

"Oh!" Linda warbles, pulling away. "Oh, no. I'm so sorry." 

He sags against the doorframe like a tree overladen with snow.

"I'm sorry," Linda repeats. "I've just been thinking all weekend about—"

Charlie's sharp cry shatters the conversation. Desperation seeps into Linda's already haggard expression, but she squares herself and turns. "Mommy's here, baby," she calls, and she disappears into the back bedroom, leaving Lucifer and Chloe on the front stoop, the door hanging wide open, a steady breeze billowing through.

"Lucifer," Chloe asks, "are you o—"

He shakes his head before giving her a spasmodic little wave. Of course he probably wants a moment to collect himself. 

"I'll help Linda, then," she tells him, and she jets inside. 

* * *

A pervasive sense of wrongness about the house niggles in Chloe's gut. Something smells like rot, and she steps over a wet towel, which is lying in the hallway despite the floors being oak. "Linda?" she calls, a half-whisper, as she reaches the closed door at the end of the hall. Pantyhose hang from the doorknob. "Linda, are you okay?"

Linda doesn't answer, the sounds of her shushing the fussing baby filtering through the thick wood. Chloe knocks. "Linda?" 

Nothing.

She waits twenty seconds and knocks again, then pushes aside the pantyhose to twist the knob. 

Linda's bedroom is like a concentrated version of Chloe's, but with baby toys and clothes in the place of books, papers, and boxes. Linda sits on the edge of her mattress, bouncing Charlie on her knee. "It's okay," she says. "It's okay, baby." But the words sound more robotic than purposeful.

"Linda?" Chloe dodges the dirty pile of onesies forming a mountain at the foot of the bed. "Linda, hey, what's wrong?"

Linda stares with wet eyes like she's watching a funeral procession. 

"Hey, talk to me," Chloe persists, sitting down beside her. An open orange pill bottle rests on the nightstand—label: alprazolam 0.25mg. More pill bottles litter the sink beyond in the master bathroom, and the pervasive sense of wrongness burgeons into blaring sirens. "Linda?"

Linda coos at the baby, kissing him, sniffling. "What if whatever happened to Lucifer happened to Amenadiel? What if he's in chains somewhere. H-hurt. I can't stop thinking about—" 

"Linda, we don't know that," Chloe soothes. "We don't know anything. We can't make assumptions."

Linda meets Chloe's eyes, her expression an open wound. "It was better not having any idea at all."

"Have you been alone this whole weekend?" 

"Maze didn't come home after Lucifer showed up. Said there was an emergency bounty. Didn't know when she'd be back."

Guilt coils. They'd relegated Linda to a backburner for Lucifer's sake. With Maze gone, Linda's primary support structure is gone, too. Chloe hadn't realized. She hadn't even _thought_. "Is your spare bedroom clean?"

"I … think so," Linda replies in a foggy tone. "Why?"

Chloe holds out her arms. "Why don't you give me Charlie and get some sleep? I'll pick up in here while you take a nap."

"Oh, Chloe, you don't have to do th—"

"Yes, I _do_." 

"But Lucifer—"

"Can wait a bit." Or help. She wonders how badly he'd balk at doing laundry. "There's nothing more important than you right now, okay?"

Linda hugs the baby closer. "You … won't take him out of the house?"

"The farthest I'm going is the kitchen. I promise."

She slumps like someone cut her strings. "I'm so tired," she confesses, surrendering the wriggling baby. "I feel empty all the time. I thought it was getting better, but then Lucifer came back, and—"

"I know," Chloe says as she wraps her arms around Charlie, hugging him close. "I know. I've been there."

"You have?"

Chloe nods. The months after Trixie had been born—months that should have been joyful—are a gray, featureless blur in her head. She remembers Dan bringing her flowers, trying to cheer her up, but … at least she'd _had_ Dan. Linda is alone now. "Hormones suck."

Linda laughs a little. "Yeah. They do."

"I'm sorry I haven't been here," Chloe says. Charlie squirms, and she shifts him to her shoulder, rubbing his back. "Linda, I'm so sorry."

Linda's smile is brittle. "We've all had our grief. And the Tribe nights have helped."

"Go sleep, Linda," Chloe assures her. "I've got Charlie."

"You're _sure_?"

"I'm sure."

Linda doesn't reply so much as sob before stumbling away.

* * *

Lucifer paces in the living room, back and forth, back and forth, his expression cut by the sharp edges of his jaw and cheekbones. If he were wearing his usual $10,000 ensemble, he would radiate Tyger, Tyger vibes. In Dan's flip-flops, a stained hoodie, and warmups, though, Lucifer seems like a disgruntled NBA player, which ruins the whole mystique.

"Doing okay?" she asks. When he pauses his frothing to quirk a disbelieving eyebrow at her, she's quick to amend herself to, "Relatively speaking, I mean." 

"Ba!" Charlie blurts, pointing with tiny grasping fingers.

"That"—Lucifer fixates on the baby—"… Charlie?" A slight tremor of awe tinges his tone. The first undeniable proof that time has passed since their balcony kiss. 

"Yeah." She laughs as Charlie babbles. "He got big, didn't he?"

"Well, he's certainly less smooshed than I recall." Lucifer shakes his head, staring. "You humans. You grow and change so bloody quickly, I …." He trails away into speechlessness.

"Wanna hold him?" Lucifer holds up his hands—not to reach but ward away—and steps back as though he's dodging a physical blow. She doesn't press. "Okay, well, will you help me with cleaning up Linda's bedroom, then?"

Dragging out the word, he says, "Why?" 

"Because Linda needs help, you don't want to deal with the baby, and it's what friends do."

Curiosity sweeps out of his expression like pins at a bowling alley, smashed into the gutter by need. "I … I-I," he manages before gritting out, "what." He takes a hitching step toward the master bedroom.

Fuck. "I didn't mean—"

"Explain what you wish me to accomplish, will you?" he snaps. He grabs at the hoodie's drawstring, twisting the cord around his shaking fingers. "Before I bloody pop."

"But—"

" _Please_."

"Laundry," Chloe blurts in response to his desperation. "On the floor in Linda's bedroom. Go."

He takes another step, relaxing as he lets the compulsion sweep him in that direction. "Right, then." And off he stalks down the hall.

"Ba!" shouts the baby, pointing after him, bouncing on her hip.

Guilt is strangulating as she dashes after him. "Lucifer, I really didn't mean to—never mind the laundry!"

He wilts against the doorframe. "It's all right."

Not in _any_ universe does she agree. "I only want you to clean if _you_ want to clean."

"Detective, I _do_ wish to help," he confesses, "or I'd've put up more of a fuss." 

Oh.

He worriedly regards the door to the second bedroom. "Will she be … all right?" 

"I _hope_ —" No. "I'd like—" No. "I mean, it's possible." She sighs. "I should've checked on her more. I—"

"Well, you're here now," Lucifer says. "Let's make the most of it, shall we?" 

"Ba!" says Charlie, bouncing again.

"You see? Even the child agrees."

Chloe snickers, jiggling her hand. Charlie's tiny fingers wrap around her thumb. "They don't talk yet, you know. He's a bit too young."

Lucifer shrugs, a flash of Jane-Goodall-patiently-observing-apes loitering in his expression. Of the many things that could in this situation, his what-a-strange-and-poorly-designed-species-you-are-I-shall-never-understand schtickends up floating her nostalgia boat. Her insides clench in a good way, though she resists the urge to reply. To press closer. To just … _talk._ They haven't just talked yet, but … they've got a _lot_ to do. Smiling, she cups Charlie's head and heads back to the living room with him.

* * *

Chloe gives Charlie a fresh bottle and a fresh diaper before depositing him into his swing. She picks up the plates and takeout containers that had been left around the house. The kitchen is a science experiment gone wrong enough to become its own ecosystem. She spreads wintergreen vapor rub under her nose from the little tube she always keeps in her pocket for masking dead-body smell, and gets to work. Dishes, microwave, fridge, countertops, oven, and floors later, she has a heaping pile of used, bleach-smelling rags and stuffed trash bags. 

It's not until she glances at her watch and realizes two-and-a-half hours have evaporated that she wonders what the hell black hole Lucifer fell into. Checking on Charlie first, she heads back to Linda's bedroom, only to halt on the threshold. 

The clothes that had been dumped on the floor in a heap now rest in crisply folded color-sorted stacks on the bed, which is perfectly made, complete with some flowery duvet Lucifer must have found in the linen closet. Vacuum tracks bar the rug, straight and meticulously spaced. The windows—so spotless the glass is invisible—let light plunge in bright diagonal shafts toward the floor. A fresh lemon scent tickles her nose. 

Lucifer stands in the bathroom, wiping down the countertops with a rag and spritzer bottle. The marble surfaces and black tiles gleam, empty now of orange pill bottles. Not one smear of soap scum remains on the glass divider between the toilet and the walk-in shower. The whole place looks like a coked-out Donna Reed blew through. 

"Whaaat," she says.

"Detective"—he glances at her—"yes, I wasn't certain how the Doctor prefers to organize her medicine cabinet, so I've alphabetized by categ—"

"You organized her medicine cabinet?"

He frowns. "Yes, Detective. By category and drug name. Do keep up."

"And you color sorted the laundry."

His brow wrinkles. "How else should I have done it?"

"And … and you _vacuumed._ "

"I am not a heathen, you know," he scoffs. "How exactly did you think my penthouse stayed spotless?"

"Not a heathen …." Her voice trails away as she stares past his shoulder at the tidy room. "Lucifer, the lines in the rug are like factory-printed notebook paper."

"I fail to see your point."

"I … I just … I knew you were a bit of a neat freak, but—" His affronted expression only grows. "I guess I just figured you had a cleaning service."

"Well, you figured wrong, clearly," he grumbles, spritzing solution onto the counter. "I loathe dust, and I've yet to find a human who can see well enough to get it all. Blind as bats. All of you."

"You can see better than we can?"

"Of course I can," he retorts. "What do you take me for?"

She leans against the doorframe, unable to stop a smile from stretching across her face. "You," she says softly. "Just you." Her fastidious, favorite, perfectly flawed fallen angel. "Lucifer."

"Yes, well, I suppose you're one of the few humans who does," he admits as he scrubs at the soap dish. 

And all at once, the fact that he's here bowls her over. That he's here _now_. Close enough to touch and smell and hear and _see_. Close enough for conversations about vacuuming methods, of all things, and—

"Oh, my God," Linda exclaims behind them, her words accented by the baby blowing spit bubbles. "Did you …? What did …? This is _immaculate_. I … I don't even know what to say." 

"You could start with proper attribution," Lucifer huffs. "Dad couldn't care less whether your medicine cabinet is properly sorted."

* * *

"You really don't remember _anything_?" Linda says, wide-eyed, over the top of her steaming coffee mug. "For literally _thousands_ of years, there's just … _nothing_."

"Or perhaps five months."

"If you weren't in Hell."

"Correct."

They sit in the living room once Charlie's down for his afternoon nap, Lucifer and Chloe beside each other on the couch, Linda in her wingback chair. With the windows open, a warm breeze billows through, carrying on its coattails the chirps of birds, the swish of distant traffic, and the chatter of children playing. 

"Can angels get diseases? Disorders?" Linda asks. "Dementia, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, cancer, stroke, anything like that?"

"Of course not," Lucifer scoffs.

"You're sure?"

"Doctor, we are not the product of evolution. Flaws in our design didn't have the opportunity to develop over millions of iterations. God and Goddess birthed us, fully formed and physically perfect, from the Beginning. We cannot age, our bodies don't betray us, and we cannot be _infected_." 

"Right. Right, that makes sense," Linda says, nodding along. "But … what about around Chloe?"

"What do you mean?" Chloe asks.

"Lucifer's vulnerable around you," Linda continues.

"Vulnerable, yes," Lucifer chimes in. "As in you can stab me with sharp objects. But I'm still a different species."

"Hmm. How sure are you about that?"

Lucifer glances sidelong at Chloe. "Doctor—"

"Amenadiel became human enough to procreate with me. How do you know you're not becoming human, too?"

"Because I've never even gotten a bloody cold!" he insists. "Despite the Detective's sticky-fingered little petri dish grabbing me at every opportunity."

Chloe grins sheepishly, thinking of all the plagues Trixie's brought home with her. "That's … true." 

"So, we are probably talking about some kind of injury," Linda decides. "Either physical or psychological. Or possibly a bad drug interaction? Have you taken anything since you got back?"

"That presumes the Detective keeps anything interesting in her home," Lucifer says, "which I assure you, she does not."

"Lucifer," Linda scolds.

He sighs, deflating. "Only a bottle of scotch." 

"And the dose of Tylenol I gave him when he was still out of it," Chloe adds. 

Linda taps her pen against her steno pad. "And, really, you remember _nothing_?"

"Not a bloody thing, Doctor," confirms Lucifer.

"Nada," Linda continues, incredulous. "Zip. Zilch."

"Accurate, yes."

"That's …." She trails away.

Lucifer leans forward, the cushions squeaking as his weight shifts. "At the very least, intriguing on a professional level?"

"Well, it's," she hedges, "certainly the most _profound_ case of amnesia I've ever run into, if we're really talking millennia." 

"So, you'll help him?" Chloe says. 

Linda takes a sip from her mug, nodding once more. 

"Oh, thank God." Chloe sags against the back of the couch. "Linda, thank you. I am _so_ out of my depth on this one."

Linda sets her coffee cup onto a floral ceramic coaster. "Cat, grasshopper, paperclip. Remember those words."

"Pardon?" says Lucifer.

"Just remember them," she says, rising from her chair to wind around the coffee table, stopping when she reaches Lucifer's elbow, propped on the arm of the couch. "Any headaches, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision?"

"I've had a constant headache since I arrived."

"Arrived as in at my house?"

"Arrived as in crashed to Earth, two days ago."

"But headaches could be stress, right?" Chloe interjects, unable to quell her worry. "Just stress? This is pretty—" Stressful. She catches herself just in time, wincing in Lucifer's direction. "Um." 

"Hmm," Linda says as she raises a finger to Lucifer's face. His long legs bump into the coffee table as he scrambles backward. "Sorry. I didn't intend to startle you." She holds up her hands, palms facing him, in a gesture of surrender. "May I touch your face?"

Lucifer resettles like a flustered hen. "Very well."

His fists clench by his hips as she pulls down his lower eyelids to peer into his eyes. She tilts his head toward the sunlight. He doesn't squint, though he grimaces. 

"Can you follow my finger?" Linda says, dragging her index finger through the dust-motes drifting in front of his face. 

He humors her, his gaze chasing her hand left and right and up and down.

"Any tinnitus?" she continues. "Lightheadedness?"

"No, Doctor."

"Has he had any other memory issues that you've noticed?" Linda asks, glancing at Chloe. "Any confusion that doesn't match the situation? Misplacing things? Repeating something without realizing he's said it before?"

"No," Chloe says. 

"Any stumbling? Mumbling? Trouble finding words for things? Balance issues? Anything that didn't seem right in context?"

"Nope."

"Okay." Linda lets his face go and steps back, her calves bumping into her coffee table. "What words did I tell you?"

Lucifer gives her a bored look. "Grasshopper, paperclip, and cat. Really, Doctor, what is this about?" 

"Just checking your short-term memory." Linda sits down, worrying at the bridge of her nose under her glasses before grabbing her notepad to jot a few things down. "You had a noticeable reaction to me hugging you earlier," she says, her ballpoint pen making scratching noises as she writes. "And when I tried to touch your face."

"I'm well aware."

"Can you tell me how you felt when I hugged you?" 

An awkward, barking laugh pops loose from him. "Say, have you any scotch?"

"In the cabinet." She points to a medium-sized booze cupboard along the back wall, and Lucifer scurries away like someone lit the couch on fire. Linda's discerning gaze follows him. "How would you characterize your current stress level?" 

"On what bloody scale?" Lucifer snarks.

"Are you stressed about the fact you can't remember things?"

"Not really."

"Something else?" Linda prods. "Being here, perhaps?

A clinking noise and a liquid slosh punctuate the following silence as Lucifer pours himself a laden glassful of Glenlivet. Chloe's unsure if she should mention Lucifer had had a near panic attack that morning when Chloe had accidentally touched his back. Granted, that might have been about the compulsion stripping him of his ability to move, not being touched, but … no. She can't. She promised. If only the crushing sense of helplessness stomping on her psyche would shut up. 

"Lucifer," Linda tries again, "can you try to put into words how you're feeling right now?" 

He clutches his crystal tumbler like a shield, rocking in place with agitation. His gaze darts to the door, his troubled expression unreadable beyond the broad strokes of "disturbed." 

"Would you feel more comfortable if Chloe stepped out?" Linda asks.

He kicks back the glass, taking a huge swallow. "No," he says, the word thready and wet. 

"It's okay if you want me to leave," Chloe assures him. "I can go outside. I'll still be close."

" _No_ ," he repeats. 

His desperation is like a bull caught in an arena, pawing the ground before, in the futile hope of self-preservation, it charges the fighter waving the flag.

"Okay. _Okay_ ," Linda soothes. "Let's just breathe for a moment. In and out." 

The remaining liquid in Lucifer's glass sloshes as his upset energy flows down his arm, making his grip shake. 

Chloe sits on her hands, trying to resist the urge to rise from the couch and close the distance between them. To wrap her arms around him. Instead, she murmurs, "I'm not going anywhere unless you ask me to." 

He shudders as he tries to relax. His exhalation is almost a sob. Outside on the walk, a woman walks by pushing a stroller. Birds chirp. Leaves rustle in the wind. At last, he settles.

"So," Linda continues, watching him, "all I've got to go on are persistent headaches, a gaping chasm of retrograde amnesia, the violent circumstances of your arrival, generalized anxiety, and a seizure that may or may not be related to any of this."

"Oh, goody," Lucifer grumbles, staring miserably into his glass, "a puzzle."

"I'd like to send you to get an MRI first, before we do _anything_ else," Linda says, sipping from her coffee, "and then I'd like to consult with one of my colleagues who's a neurosurgeon."

"… Why?"

"Because, Lucifer, as far as I can tell, my options here are dissociative amnesia or some other acute stress reaction, or some kind of subacute brain bleed. The latter is a ticking time bomb requiring immediate disarmament, and the former requires a much more cautious approach."

Chloe's insides swoop. "You really think it's a brain injury?" 

"Oh, no. Probably not," Linda says, gaze tracing Lucifer's wending return path to the couch. "Sorry, I didn't mean to characterize that like it was a fifty-fifty thing. More like ninety-nine to one. Given everything you've told me, given what I'm seeing right now, given Lucifer's fantastic ability to heal from physical trauma, I do think it's likely that we're dealing with some form of stress reaction, but"—Lucifer settles beside Chloe again—"let's be safe, all right? Brain injuries aren't something to play around with, and I don't want this to be that one time."

"Should we go to the ER right now?" Chloe says. "For the MRI?"

"No, I want you to go to the place where I send my patients. I'll call in about the MRI after you leave. Emphasize the extreme need for discretion." 

"Right. Right, okay." 

"The ER's gonna be a mess on Sunday night anyway—you wouldn't be saving much time, given Lucifer's non-emergent presentation," Linda assures them. "But if you notice anyincrease in symptoms—headache, new memory problems, you name it—that _is_ an emergency." 

"And then we go to the ER?"

"Right." Linda writes an address and rips a piece of paper from her notebook, proffering it across the coffee table. "This is where I want you to go. It's an imaging center on Sepulveda." 

"Can't we treat me for everything here, save me the trouble?" Lucifer says.

"No, because I'm not qualified to treat everything!" Linda exclaims, slamming her mug onto the coaster. "Treatment for a brain bleed likely involves drilling holes into your skull." Her notebook and pen cascade to the floor. "When will you people get I'm _not_ that kind of doctor?" 

Lucifer's eyebrows creep toward his hairline. "You … _people_?" 

"Sorry." Linda slumps. "Sorry, that came out snappish. I'm sorry." 

"I understand you're stressed, Doctor. You've my apologies for exacerbating your troubles. I was only—"

"You really don't remember what happened to Amenadiel?" Linda says in a tiny voice, her lower lip trembling. "Not even a g-glimmer?"

Lucifer tilts his head to the side, his expression equal parts crushed and embittered. "If I knew _anything_ to put your mind at ease, I would tell you. I worry for my brother as well."

"Of course, I know you would," she says, sniffling. "And I know you do." Her red-rimmed eyes are stark in the warm light. Chloe grabs the tissue dispenser from the end table and extends it in Linda's direction. "Thank you. I-I … I didn't mean …."

"The last I recall of him," Lucifer continues, his voice low and honey rich, "we were at the Mayan, quelling demons to recover young Charlie. Truly, that's all I can bring to mind."

"I shouldn't have pressured you," Linda gasps, blowing her nose. "I just … I just miss him so much."

"Linda," Chloe begins, heart sinking, "do you have anyone else you could refer us to? Someone who might have … less of a personal stake?" 

"Oh." Linda sniffs. "Oh, no." She crumples up the tissue with so much force her clutched fist shakes. "Oh, no, I'm helping. I _want_ to help."

"Doctor, are you certain?" Lucifer asks.

"Mmm." She sniffs again, this time clearing her throat and taking a deep, cleansing breath. "Yes. I'm sorry." Another breath, in and out. Her composure resets, the only signs of its former disintegration being her blotchy cheeks and puffy eyes. "I won't mention Amenadiel again. That was unfair of me." She gazes at Lucifer with a steely, determined expression. "This is about _you_. And _your_ memory loss."

"Doctor …."

"It'll give me something to do other than wallow, okay?" She takes one last fortifying breath before bending over to pick up her pen and notepad. "Now, can you tell me why you're reluctant to get your head scanned?" 

Lucifer bristles. "I simply don't enjoy the idea of being probed and prodded by … by strangers." 

Linda's brow creases. "More so than usual?"

He shifts like he's uncomfortable.

"Listen, I do want to help you," she continues with an intensifying frown, "but I want to be safe. Like I said, brain injuries aren't something to trifle with."

Lucifer knocks back the rest of his scotch in several gulps. "If you insist."

"I do insist." She recrosses her legs. "So, I'm gonna need you to get the MRI." 

Lucifer looks like Chloe ordered him to key the side of his Corvette. With his free hand, he pushes his fingers through his hair. His teeth grit, and he seems to worry a little at the inside of his lip.

"The neurosurgeon you mentioned," Chloe says, hoping to offer him some assurances. "They're someone you trust?"

Linda nods, smiling faintly. "We've been friends since med school."

"And the imaging center?"

"I promise, they're very professional."

Lucifer glowers. "Yes, yes. Very well."

"We'll go in the morning," Chloe says. Hopefully before Lucifer can stew himself into another panic. He clutches the empty glass, fingers trembling. "I'll call in sick. But is there anything that might help him, regardless of what may have caused his amnesia? Something we can do right away?"

"Some of Doctor Linda's Xanax would be lovely," Lucifer says. At Chloe's flat look, he laughs nervously. "No?"

"The best recommendation I can give you right now is to reduce stress," Linda says, turning to Lucifer. "What do you think might help you do that?"

"You mean, other than the Xanax?"

"Lucifer."

He scowls. "Isn't it _your_ job to tell me?" 

"What do you normally do when you're tense?" Linda asks.

"Drugs," he says. "Have I not said that multiple times now?"

" _Aside_ from drugs, Lucifer. I'm not against prescribing things, but I prefer pills to be a last resort, not a first one."

"But"—he clutches his thighs, running his palms along his pantlegs as he sways—"but I've no idea _what—"_

"Soak in a hot tub," Linda suggests, gesturing with her pen. "Play the piano. Take a yoga class. Get a massage. Read a book that's been on your list. Pamper yourself."

He darkens. "Doctor, I cannot do those things."

"Why?"

"Because," he pushes through his teeth, "I _can't_."

"We could go to the bookstore," Chloe offers brightly. "I don't mind. Oh, and I just got some new bubble bath."

"That sounds perfect," says Linda. 

"But," Lucifer says, the word lost without a map as his gaze shifts into the middle distance, "if I'm idle, I turn inward, and—" He blinks, and his eyes are wet like they'll overflow. 

"Oh," Chloe says, heart constricting. "Oh, Lucifer."

"Doctor, I … I …." He rubs his face, the edges of his index fingers glistening as they siphon unshed tears away. "I require something … busier."

"Then all I can suggest is to keep things as normal as possible," Linda says. "And get plenty of sleep."

"But normal for me," Lucifer grits out, "is _Hell_ , which is also not currently an option."

"How long until it's an option again?" 

"Pardon?"

"Do you plan to go back?" Linda clarifies.

Chloe's stomach plummets when all Lucifer can mutter is, "Well, I've no _desire_ to, but …." He twists and turns the empty glass in his grip. "I _like_ it here." 

"I know you do," Linda says with a sympathetic look. "I know from our talks you consider LA to be your home."

"I do," he says. His wistfulness burns like wildfire. "It _is_ my home. The home I desire, at any rate."

"Lucifer," Chloe murmurs, "you don't have to go back to Hell. We can figure out another way. I _know_ we can, if we just talk—"

"I _can't_ ," he snaps, the words strangled. 

"I only meant if you want to!" 

He takes a tight, raspy breath, not looking at Chloe, before continuing in a more measured but still wobbling tone, "I cannot return to Hell until this amnesia sitch is resolved, regardless." Chloe sinks down in her seat, swallowing back her upset. "So, what else would you suggest, Doctor?"

"Re-establish your routine here on Earth," Linda says.

"Lux isn't an option right now, either. It's … complicated."

"Well, what do you think about going back to work? Solve cases. That's busy." She glances at Chloe. "Assuming it's okay with you, of course."

"Of _course_ it is," Chloe replies. She's yet to be reassigned a partner, thanks to LAPD's chronic understaffing, and Pierce's replacement is no stranger to Lucifer, neither his antics nor the unprecedented solve-rate he and Chloe have together. "I'm sure the lieutenant would be thrilled, actually." 

"Getting out, not _stewing on the problem,_ or _worrying about the future,_ is a great way to reduce stress." Linda gives a wry glance to her bleach-scented surroundings. "Yes, I'm aware of the unfortunate irony. But be in the moment. Establish a safe space." She smiles. "Have _fun_."

"I … did enjoy our work," Lucifer admits.

"Well, there you go." 

"I suppose. It would be nice to continue for"—he glances at Chloe, his expression a tangled whorl of emotions she can't quite read—"well, for a time." 

"Consider this your perfect excuse, then. Doctor sanctioned, even," Linda says, still grinning.

"Yes." He seems … almost torn between frustration and relief. 

Frustration that after he's moved on, he's being pulled backward. Relief that after he's moved on, he's being pulled backward. Hope floods in, where before Chloe had been resigned. Crisis aside, this might be her chance. The chance she hadn't gotten before to inject her side of things into his point of view. To make him consider possibilities for their future that don't revolve around him abandoning her again. To tip his pendulum firmly toward relief. To have a _say_.

He's literally her captive audience. 

Meanwhile, Lucifer keeps futzing with the scotch glass, eyeballing the table. On disturbed hunch, Chloe leans toward the lamp where the coasters are stacked, far away from his direct line of sight. She grabs a coaster identical to the one Linda is using for her coffee mug, and places it onto the table by Lucifer's knee, tapping it with her index finger. He drapes forward to set down the empty glass. 

So, he can use items, touch items, and consume items. He probably has some wiggle room to do things like sort Linda's medicine cabinet when he's under the umbrella of fulfilling another desire, like "cleanliness." But Chloe needs to add options for him to move or discard items, too. She wonders if the reason he hasn't showered or changed clothes today is because he's not able to discard said clothes without some interesting "task" gymnastics. Gymnastics he hasn't figured out yet, such as "using" the hamper hidden in her master closet. 

"I wonder if the scan will show something different," Linda muses, oblivious, as she sips her coffee.

"Different?" Chloe asks.

"Well, like we've discussed, Lucifer's not human." Linda's attention shifts to Lucifer. "You look human, but … you've got wings." Her lips contort, scrunching up her face. "How are they attached to you? Extra bones? Sockets?" Her eyes widen. "Is your skeleton hollow like a bird's? Do you even have the same internal organs as a person?"

"Doctor, is this your way of officially ascertaining whether I've a brain?" Lucifer says tiredly.

"No, no, I'm just"—she shakes her head—"I've never really thought about this before. It's … it's _fascinating_." 

"Yes, well." Lucifer sighs. "As _fascinating_ as I am, the truth is, I've no idea."

"Really?" 

"I've not exactly been provided with an opportunity to inspect my own viscera before," he counters, sounding a bit defensive. "Divine, remember?" He pats his chest. "Immortal. Invulnerable." His eyebrows creep upward when neither Linda or Chloe respond. "Not ringing a bell?"

"Didn't they scan your shoulder when you got stabbed?" Chloe asks.

"Yes, I didn't actually go to the hospital after that," he replies breezily.

" _What_?"

"Charmed the EMTs," he says, directing a woeful glance at his empty scotch glass. With a sigh, he snatches it off the coaster and returns to the liquor cabinet for another generous pour. "They dropped me off at my house in the Hills."

"What about when you got shot?"

"Which time?"

She blinks. "You almost died …."

"Detective, I still need more specificity than that," he says, stalking back to the couch. "Though I suppose that eliminates the confrontation with Malcolm, since there was no _almost_ dyingwith that one."

"With … with Leona Franklin?" she prods. "The bomb at Lux?"

"Oh, yes, that," he says with a shrug. Like _that_ was a white shirt, turned pink in his laundry, nothing dire. "Charmed the EMTs. They dropped me and Eve off at my house in the Hills." He tilts his head. "I say, this is becoming a bit of a trend, isn't it? Hadn't noticed before."

"Did you," Chloe says, trying not to sound too baffled, "keep a first-aid kit there or something?"

"I liked the view. It was lovely for recuperating." He stares into space, pensive. "I do hope Simon sold it to a deserving soul rather than some nameless developer hoping to launder money."

"Huh," Chloe says. She glances at Linda, who can only make a _beats-the-hell-outta-me_ face in response. "Well." Chloe checks her watch. "Dan is due back with Trixie soon. Thank you so much, Linda." 

"No," Linda replies. "No, thank _you._ Thank both of you. Truly. Your help today meant a lot." A soft, bubbly laugh effervesces from her lips. "My house is _clean_. I forgot how nice it feels."

"I'm glad to help. I'm sorry I wasn't here soon—"

"Don't." Linda squeezes Chloe's wrist. 

Chloe swallows, silenced.

"May I?" Lucifer says, holding out his hand. 

With a frown, Linda gives him her notebook, which is covered in illegible blue-ink scrawl. Careful to avoid any of Linda's notes, he writes with his impeccable script a name—Analise—followed by a phone number. "Call that number," he explains, tapping the paper where he wrote. "Tell her Lucifer referred you, and that I'll consider our bargain fulfilled if she fits you into her schedule on a weekly basis for the foreseeable future. Tell her to call the Detective if she needs confirmation from me—I've no cellphone at the moment, and that's where I'm staying."

"Who is this?" Linda asks.

"A cleaner. Usually for far less scrupulous dealings than fixing up the cluttered duplex of a busy mother, but I'm certain she'd love a wholesome change of pace."

"Lucifer, I …." Linda clutches the notebook with a sniff. "Do I owe you?"

"Preposterous." He scoffs, refusing to meet anyone's eyes. "Now, shall we go? The traffic in this bloody town is Hell." He doesn't wait for Chloe to answer, instead, dashing onto the front walk as if the bleach fumes inside Linda's house are angel kryptonite.

"Listen," Linda murmurs, touching Chloe's shoulder as they amble after him. "Tread lightly with him, okay? Keep his stress levels _low_. If this truly is dissociative amnesia, that means he doesn't remember because he doesn't _want_ to. It's a psychological defense mechanism—walls he's put up, essentially—to prevent him from having to confront feelings or events he doesn't feel able to confront. I'm frankly surprised you got him to come here."

"He didn't want to. He only caved when he found out Amenadiel was missing."

Linda nods. "Some _gentle_ external stress is good. Needed, even, to prevent stagnation in cases like this. Just don't overdo it."

"Linda, he's …." What threatened to be a gushing, stressed confession dies on Chloe's lips as she watches over Linda's shoulder, across the lawn, as Lucifer climbs into the passenger side of her car. He tips onto his side, curling away from them, again somehow filling very little space despite his stature. Her chest tightens, seeing that, and she can't. She just can't. Betraying his trust won't help anything. "I'll try not to. Thanks."


	7. "no bad guy here"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of people have asked me when various plot elements are going to appear in _For Each Ecstatic Instant_ , such as the BDSM. Up front, I want to promise everything I've tagged as a major component of this story is a major. Component. Of this story. By the end of this thing, it's my hope you'll have gotten your fill and then some.
> 
> But, remember, this fic is _Game of Thrones_ big. There are several different plot elements (BDSM included) that are introduced gradually. What does this mean? Well, I'd actually call the first 14 chapters of this story the introduction, where I'm gradually introducing more and more plot elements, gradually throwing extra balls into the mix to juggle. 
> 
> One of the things I wanted to do when I wrote this story was use it to palatably introduce people to BDSM who might have little or no exposure to it—or who might have only been exposed to it through fiction that portrays it terribly. This means introducing it slowly, in ways that specifically make sense for the characters and work within the framework of the narrative. 
> 
> This is going to be one of those stories where, when you compare the first chapter to the last chapter, you might be saying, "If I hadn't read it myself, I would have had no idea how she got from there to here." The scope of this thing goes from narrow and quiet to broad and bold. It's primarily a character-driven piece instead of action-oriented, so the narrative structure is not going to be as traditional as _Castaway_ 's was. In terms of world and mythos building, however, such as expanding on Lucifer's powers and role in the universe, and exploring the inner workings of Hell, this story will be in a similar vein to _And There Was Light_. 
> 
> When the idea for this story first hit me, I was worried it would be too niche for very many people to appreciate. Which was a difficult thing for me to make peace with, at first. I write for me, but I share for you all, and the sharing—the joy of interacting with readers—is what helps motivate me to finish what I start instead of dropping the ball as soon as something shinier comes along. Writing, as any of you who have tried it probably know, is inherently a masochistic hobby. It's rewarding in the end, but punishing in the process, and given the length of this story, that was a lot of punishment I’d be signing up for if I took the plunge.
> 
> So, what am I saying with all of this? 
> 
> Basically, that I decided, if I'm going to do this thing that might not get read by anybody, I might as well DO. THIS. THING. All the way. Go big or go the fuck home. I pulled no punches, and I wrote the biggest, craziest, plottiest, kinkiest maze of trope subversion, emotions, and character analysis I've ever attempted. It was glorious. I learned a lot in the process. This was my “level up as a writer” fic. I'm super proud of what I've made. And I really hope you enjoy the ride as much as I did. 
> 
> But, you know, don't expect to know exactly what ride you're on for a while yet :)
> 
> Anyway, thanks for all the lovely comments everybody! I've really enjoyed hearing from everybody!

Traffic on Venice Boulevard is bumper to bumper, thanks to a gruesome accident ahead involving a flipped car, but it's too late to escape vehicular quicksand. She's committed. "Will you tell me about Constantine?" she asks.

"Why?" Lucifer replies, bristling.

"Now that we've got most of the immediate fires dealt with, I'd like to find the guy you think can free you. John, was it?"

"Don't be silly. Maze will deal with it."

"Maze might be amazing, but she's only one person."

"Demon," he corrects.

"Demon," Chloe amends, biting back on a sudden swell of irritation. "Regardless, the world's plenty big enough for two of us to be looking, so …?"

"So, what?" 

"Why are you dodging my questions?"

"Am I?"

Her annoyance spills into a sigh. "I'm not gonna force you, but, Lucifer, come on. I'm a cop. I'm in a pretty good position to help."

He grips the seatbelt over his chest, running his fingers idly—nervously?—up and down the nylon. "I … would prefer you not to associate with him."

"Who said anything about associating with him? I'm just talking about _finding_ him." 

"Yes, well." 

His gaze tips toward the vehicle driving next to them on his side. The driver is staring more into her rearview mirror than at the road, her car inching slowly forward as she applies a thick coat of mascara. Chloe doesn't have any citation paperwork with her, but she honks a little, leaning across Lucifer to hold her badge up to the window. The woman, bug-eyed, drops the mascara applicator like it burned her. Chloe gives her a thumbs up and a polite smile.

"Is he evil or something?" Chloe says, returning her attention to Lucifer. "Is he gonna zap me with his evil warlock powers? Am I out of my weight class?"

Lucifer opens his mouth as though he's about to slingshot into diatribe mode, but he stops himself with a hitching, unspoken syllable. "No. He's not evil. He wouldn't attack you without reason."

"Is looking for him 'reason' enough?"

"No."

"So, what's the problem?"

A pregnant pause fills the car. "The short answer is history, I suppose."

"Well, how about the long answer, then, because"—she winces when she hears herself, demanding—"sorry. Sorry, I'm not trying to grill you, or force you, or. Sorry." Fuck.

"Did I not say to stop apologizing?" he replies testily. 

She grinds her teeth. "Why not start with a description?" she tries. "I promise to keep you in the loop on the search." When he still seems reluctant, she presses onward. "Lucifer, I just want to help. I want to help get you out of this, like I promised. I mean. If _you_ want me to."

"He's," Lucifer says, his face screwing up like he already regrets elaborating, "shorter than me."

"How much shorter?"

"Five inches or so."

"So, like, five foot nine? Five foot ten?" When he nods, she continues, "What else?" 

"Blond hair, usually, unless he's in a mood."

"Platinum blond? Dirty blond?"

He sighs, letting the seatbelt go to slap against his sternum. "Honey blond. Brown eyes. Lean build. British accent. White skin. Terrible fashion sense. Is that all?"

"Is he a British citizen?" she asks.

"I believe so."

"Is that where he lives? Great Britain?"

"He was based in Georgia, last I knew."

"State or country?"

"State. Atlanta, specifically."

She ponders that as she hits her right turn signal to inch in front of Mascara Lady, who seems ecstatic the cop is moving onward, and readily lets her in. A welcomed merge. That's a first for Los Angeles. 

"If he's not American, he might have some kind of visa to be here," Chloe muses. "I have a friend at the State Department who—"

Lucifer scoffs. "Detective, his papers are as legitimate as mine were. The State Department won't know a bloody thing."

Oh. Well, shit. "Does he have any aliases?"

"None that I'm aware of."

"Okay," Chloe says with a nod. "That's a start, I guess. I'll see what I can do. Thanks."

"Of course."

They drive on.

* * *

Thanks to the accident, Chloe and Lucifer beat Dan home by less than ten minutes. 

"What the fuck?" Dan says, not even making it across the threshold before he fixates on Lucifer, who's sitting on the couch in the distant living room.

"Swearing makes people feel bad," Trixie chides, pushing past them. 

"What is _he_ doing here?" Dan points—flails?—at Lucifer. "When did _this_ happen?" A blink. "Wait, is that my sweatshirt?"

"Daniel, how are you?" Lucifer calls over the edge of Chloe's iPad, his dark eyes wary and calculating. He nods at Trixie. "Offspring."

"What the fudge!" 

Trixie tugs on Chloe's shirt. "Mom, can I go to my room?"

"Of course, babe," Chloe replies. 

Trixie heads down the hall, eyeing Lucifer before veering left, only to halt. "Where'd all my artwork go?" she asks, making a face at the scorched, bald paint on the walls. "It looks like someone burned—"

"We'll talk in a minute, Monkey," Chloe says in a rush, "after Dad leaves, okay?"

"Whatever." Trixie gives Lucifer a final discerning frown before sliding shut her bedroom door.

Dan folds his arms. "Explain. Now. Ten words or less."

Where to even begin. Chloe hopes, just _hopes_ , he doesn't walk far enough inside the house to lay eyes on the obliterated kitchen—he might have a stroke. Luckily, Trixie had been too fixated on Lucifer and her missing pictures to notice. 

Lucifer rises from the couch. "Daniel, really I—"

"I'm not talking to you," Dan snaps. He leans closer to Chloe, looming. "Well?"

"Lucifer is back," she hazards, looking up at him. "He … needs help?"

Dan rolls his eyes. “Of course he does. Chloe, are you _crazy_? You do remember he left you again, right?"

"Dan—"

"He _left_ you. _Again_. This time for more than two weeks."

"Why must people persist in talking of me as though I'm not standing right here?" Lucifer interjects behind Chloe's shoulder.

"Dude"—Dan affords Lucifer a brief glare—"if _that's_ the part of this conversation that bothers you—"

"Lucifer, will you excuse us?" she interrupts through gritted teeth. 

"Sending me to my room, are we?" Lucifer challenges.

She turns to him, flinching when she realizes how close he's drifted, almost turning her into the squished filling of a Dan-Lucifer manwich. Somewhere behind her left eye, a muscle spasms. A diffuse ache blooms inside her skull. 

"I …." But under pressure, she can't figure out how to phrase asking Lucifer to give them privacy in a way he might take halfway well. Instead, she offers him a pleading look, then grabs Dan by the hand, urging him onto the stoop with her, and pulls the door closed. 

Lucifer's consternated, "But, Detective!" chases after them, muffled through the sun-cracked wood, and she realizes she may have exchanged a stinging comment for an unequivocal command. A door closed in one's face is a pretty clearly expressed desire. 

Dan doesn't give her a chance to dwell, though. "So, what the hell is going on?" he says. "And don't just tell me he needs help."

"But he _does_ need help," she replies.

"With what? What can he _possibly—"_

"He's sick! Something happened to him. No idea what. And you know him—he doesn't have anyone." 

"He has whoever the fuck he wants, Chloe. That's the whole fucking problem."

"He's sick," she repeats, trying to stay calm, "and he's homeless right now. I'd like to think even you would help him if he asked."

"I assure you; I would not!" Lucifer protests through the window, which is cracked open for the breeze. 

Dan glares at the sill. Chloe clutches the arm of his jacket, pulling him down the walk, out of sight of her unit. 

"This is a mistake," he insists. "A _huge_ mistake, Chlo. I don't want to see you spend another five months drifting around in a fucking stupor because of that guy!" 

"I wasn't in a stupor!" 

"Okay." Agitated, he pulls his fingers through his hair. "Okay, a poor choice of words, but you weren't _you,_ either." He puts a hand on her shoulder. "Chloe, you weren't you."

She can't refute him. 

He points a stress-gnarled finger toward her apartment. "He did that to you. He did. And, now, you've let him back in, because, what, he needs a fucking nurse and told you some sob story to get you to pity him?"

"It's not like that."

"Well, tell me what it's fucking like, because I don't—"

"He didn't leave because he _wanted_ to!"

"That's bullshit. Everybody has a choice, Chloe."

"People could have _died_ ," she insists. "He's lost _everything_ trying to protect us—yes, even you—and maybe I'm pissed about his methods, but …." A fire burns in her gut, simmering, only for someone to dump grease onto it. "No, I'm not 'maybe' pissed," she adds, putting the word maybe into air quotes. "I'm _furious_ at him. He left me without even giving me the _option_ to … to …." She shakes her head. "I don't know. But this _isn't_ a case of me falling into his arms to fawn over him, which I have _never_ done, I'll have you know, and, and"—something in her chest expands like the heated air trapped inside a piston—"and you know, I'm actually really insulted you would insinuate such a thing."

Dan blinks like she reached out and smacked him. "Chloe, I—" 

"What I am right now is sad, and conflicted, and angry, and _tired,_ not fawning," she says, steamrolling any of his obligate apologies before she can lose her momentum, "but I love him, and he needs my help, so, I'm gonna fucking help him. Got it?"

"Yeah," Dan says, deflating. "Yeah, Chloe. I got it."

"In fact, I'm bringing him to work on Tuesday," she says, emboldened. "So, suck it up and deal. I'm not interested in more of your misplaced blame game. He didn't kill Charlotte—"

"I know."

"—and he didn't leave you. He left _me_. How I cope with that is _my_ choice. Not yours." Her choppy exhalations fill the quiet as she catches her breath. The muscle spasming behind her eye feels like it's doing the cha cha, at this point. She rubs her eyes.

"You're right," he says at last, looking at his feet. "I'm sorry."

"Thank you," she huffs. 

"I just …." His expression turns regretful. "I don't want you to get hurt again."

"I know," she admits, softening. "And I love you for that. I do. But …."

He gives her a wry look. "Turn it down a few notches?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that would be a great start."

"Okay." He directs a doubtful gaze at her apartment but doesn't comment any further on its occupants. "Did you say you're bringing him to work on Tuesday?" She opens her mouth to reply, but he holds up his hands, palms flat, facing her, in a gesture of surrender. "I'm not bitching—I swear—I'm only wondering what happened to Monday."

"I'm taking him to get an MRI tomorrow."

"Oh," is all Dan says, like it's just now sinking in what she said. That Lucifer is sick. And she didn't remotely mean he has a cold. "I …." His lower lip twitches. "I'm … sure he'll be fine."

"Yeah, well," she grumbles, "try not to cheer if he isn't, okay?"

"I don't want the guy sick, Chloe. I just don't want him _here_." 

"I know." She gives Dan's bicep a reassuring rub. "So, I'll see you in a week?"

"You're sure you're okay for me to go?" he says, sounding apprehensive.

She grins, squeezing his arm. "I'm fine, Dan. Really. Go visit your mom."

* * *

Lucifer's standing just inside the door, staring into space like he blue-screened-of-death, and she can only imagine how he must feel. He's strong enough to stop an SUV barehanded, with nothing more than a light pole for leverage. Yet, now, he's stymied by a wooden door.

"I'm sorry," she says as he backs off the threshold, allowing her through. She's quick to retrieve her iPad and recite the freedom of interaction command, this time adding options to move and discard things.

She wishes she could figure out a way to keep that one from canceling so often. But the more ifs, ands, thens, and maybes Lucifer has to follow, the more likely they'll run into a semantical catch-22 they can't navigate around. The more likely Lucifer will be tortured. There's a balance to be achieved between preemptive permanent freedoms and simply granting him one-offs as needed. Yet the idea of stifling him intentionally, even in hopes of causing him less pain … nauseates her like the stench of rotten eggs. 

The muscle spasms behind her eyeball again. The iPad is cold and heavy in her hands. 

"I think I'm done for the night," she confesses, inching toward Trixie's door. "Do you need anything before I get ready for bed?" 

He doesn't speak. Or move. 

"What's wrong?" she says, frowning at him. "Are you stuck?"

He blinks, reanimating. "Oh. No." As if to demonstrate—test?—his freedom, he reaches for the doorknob to reveal her darkening stoop. Bugs zig and zag in a cluster around the front light, like skaters at the roller derby. He shuts the door again before more than a few of them can encroach beyond her threshold. The deadbolt thunks when he engages the lock. "All fixed."

"Then … what's wrong?" 

"I'd"—his dark eyes pinch at the edges—"I'd no idea my absence would cause so much"—he shrugs, looking down at his feet—"well, so much misery."

A familiar ache like frostbite—when he stood her up for dinner, when he _left,_ when he returned with Candy, when he left _again_ —burns her heart. "You heard me and Dan? Even when we were down the walk?" 

"I wasn't eavesdropping," he says, bristling. "I only heard your tone."

"But you _could_ eavesdrop at that distance? If you wanted?"

"It doesn't bloody matter what I wanted," he snaps. "You commanded me not to."

When she'd walked away from his through-the-window commentary, maybe? She clenches her fingers, nails digging into her palms like bladed crescents.

"Regardless, I am the Devil," Lucifer continues with a scoff. "When I'm not distracting myself, I can hear everything between here and the stoplight."

She gapes. "But … that's three blocks away."

"Blame Dad, not me."

"I am not _blame_ —" She clacks her jaw shut, halting her would-be explosion, and counts to five in her head. The ache waxes and wanes, constricts and releases and constricts again. "Sorry, just … still wrapping my head around some of this, I guess." 

"Yes, well." He sighs and looks away. The purple bags hugging his eyes seem almost like bruises in the darkened hallway. An unseen weight bows his shoulders. His tone is brittle when he adds, "I suppose that's the theme of the day." 

"Yeah." 

"Seeing you in the aftermath," he laments, continuing, "seeing the Doctor, Amenadiel being gone, even the child, I …."

"What about Charlie?"

"Not _Linda's_ child," he replies, new stress flooding into his words. "Beatrice. She didn't assault me when she arrived." He directs a wary glance at Trixie's scorched bedroom door. "And now she's hiding. Which I can only assume is to do with me as well, seeing as how I seem to have sown emotional destruction everywhere else."

"She probably didn't want to hear me and Dan fighting."

"Then why was she looking at me the whole bloody time?"

"I don't know. I'll talk to her." Chloe scrunches her fingers against her scalp, trying to count internally to five again. But her head is pounding, and the gelid ache of his cluelessness is too familiar, too cutting. Too much like a knife, twisting in her chest until she screams. "Lucifer, did you honestly think your absence wasn't gonna cause pain?"

He gives her a conflicted look. Like he knows. He _knows_ what he's about to say is the wrong answer. But he admits, "I suppose I did think that," anyway. 

"Well, you _shouldn't_ have!" she exclaims.

"Detective, I—"

"Your life affects mine. Just like mine affects yours. That's what love _is._ You have _friends_ here. You can't just"—balling her fists close to her chest, she shakes her hands and the iPad at him, trying to stave off the sudden tempest of hurt—"you can't just _do_ things!" 

"My regard for you was why I _left_!" he snaps back at her. "Why I prefer a world with you in it— _all_ of you—and had I stayed, you wouldn't be here." He gestures at her apartment, expression blazing. " _None_ of this would _be_ here. What part of 'apocalyptical scenario' isn't sinking in for you?" 

"You don't know that would have happened," she counters. "You're not omniscient. You're not even all that intuitive if you thought I wouldn't miss you. You don't know!"

He bares his teeth with a gusty exhalation. "And _you_ don't know Hell," he says, his voice deep and midnight dark. "Or any of its denizens." 

The Devil turns on his heels.

Fuck. "Lucifer, wait." She reaches for him. "Wait, that wasn't fair of me to call you unintuitive for—" Her fingers brush his shoulder. His body feels like hot, unbending iron as he ricochets away from her. 

"Do not _touch_ me!" he booms, making the lamps shake.

She holds up her hands. "Lucifer, I'm sorry. I'm just frustrated. And tired. And heartsick. But that's no excuse to be mean to you. Please, don't walk away. We shouldn't go to bed mad." So much for reducing his stress. Jesus.

His choppy, pained breathing makes him sound like he's close to crying, but when he turns to look at her, his irises glow crimson, his lips stretched around a rictus of clenched teeth. Her heartbeat explodes in her ears. Her insides drop into the floor. She skips back a step, but—no. No, no, _no._ She won't let an instinctive flight urge turn her into a gibbering wreck. That would be _just_ what they fucking need, for her to launch him into another self-hating spiral of I'm-a-monster. 

"What?" she demands, folding her arms. "Are you trying to scare me? Newsflash: it won't work. Because _I'm not scared of you_ , Lucifer."

Only for an anguished little non-word to coil in his throat. He exhales, his distress spilling out of him like his last breath. The hellfire fades from his eyes. "You're right, of course." And then he wraps her in his arms and murmurs, "I forgive you, darling," before kissing the top of her head. "Now, let's get you to b—"

She shoves him away. "Get off me. Get off!"

He backs up with a quizzical, entirely-too-calm look. "Apologies. I'd no intention to distress you. Are you all right?"

Oh. Oh, no. No way. This can't be— "Never mind," she tries. 

He steps closer, raising his arms as though he means to embrace her again.

"No!" she snaps, backing up another step, and he freezes. 

Trembling, she closes her eyes, feeling like their house of cards just came crashing down. "Lucifer, I don't ever want you to forgive me unless _you_ want to forgive me."

"Of course I'd want to forgive you," he says, still too calm.

"Please, disregard my previous apology," she adds. "I … please. I want you to think and feel for _yourself_."

She can tell the moment he realizes what the fuck just happened. His lips flatten into a tight, thin line. 

"I _always_ want you to think and feel for yourself," she adds, "even more than I want you to have freedom of movement."

His punishment is immediate, his anger funneling into a needing, awful moan that covers her skin in a swath of goosebumps. 

"Never mind!" she rushes to say as he convulses with the strain. "God, damn it!"

The sound of his tired, raspy panting reverberates in her brain like a freight train running her over, and she can't breathe. She can't _breathe_. She barely withholds a shout as she grabs a pillow off the couch and throws it at the wall. God, damn it, God, damn it, God, damn it! 

"It's all right, darling," he murmurs behind her. "Everything will be—"

"I don't _need_ ," she says, accenting the last word with another pillow toss, "or _want_ you"—toss—"to reassure me"—toss—"just because I'm _throwing_ things!" Toss. "I want you. To think. And feel. For _yourself._ " When she runs out of pillows, she gulps down air. Again. Again.

The awful return of silence tells her everything she needs to know. She pinches the bridge of her nose with a shaky hand, rubbing, trying to stop the spasming muscles behind her eye from exploding into some kind of migraine. "Every time I apologize to you," she grits out, "I've been commanding you to forgive me? _Every_ time? _That's_ why you haven't been mad at me? That's why you trust me? Because I _made_ you?"

At first, he says nothing. The room feels like it's spinning. 

"Did I make you love me?" she whispers in a tiny, choking voice. "Did I …? When I said …."

"No," he admits, a bare mumble. "My regard for you is my own."

She peers at him suspiciously. But he doesn't seem to be in that weird dreamy state anymore. He seems to have his wits.

"Is it?" she prods. "I mean … how do you even know?"

He shifts from foot to foot like he has no idea what to do with the sudden roller coaster of upset energy corkscrewing through his system. "When you force me to feel something, there's a drag on my"—he grimaces—"on everything. That _needing_. It lasts until I give in, and then it's …." His lower lip quivers. "Chloe, it's like dying. Like slipping into an undertow. I notice when it happens. That's retained, even when I lose all concept of what's slipped away."

"And it … didn't happen before?"

"It has," he admits, and the revelation is like an ice bucket challenge, dousing her, "but not when you've apologized. I believe the compulsion has no effect when you desire something already true."

Somehow, that's not a relief. She winces as new perspective slides in like a stage hand sneaking along the back curtain in a play. "This afternoon. Before we went to Linda's. You were—" 

"Yes," he admits, looking at the ground. His jaw clenches and unclenches and clenches again. "I've no idea why I didn't want to see her. I don't understand why I didn't want you to make me remember. Both were strategically appropriate moves. And, yet …." He looses a baffled, unhappy laugh. The disquiet in his dark eyes hurts her to her core. 

"How did I make you forget?"

"I've no idea!" he says tightly. "The whole bloody morning is a muddle …."

Which would fit with how panicked he'd been. She rakes her mind, trying to pinpoint the moment he was suddenly okay after being so very not, but … she can't. "Should I tell you to remember your old feelings?"

"Detective, I don't know," he says through gritted teeth. "My gut tells me no. That to do so would be counterproductive. But, truly, I've no idea what's better anymore, because my whole bloody perspective has been"—he gesticulates—"been _lobotomized_."

"And every time I tell you, 'never mind,' you feel like this, too? Like you're dying? Or … or having pieces cut out?"

He gives her a stressed, unhappy look. "Detective, by the time you're telling me to 'never mind' something, I _want_ to die, or I'm already dead." 

Her stomach drops all over again. "Any desire I express makes you feel that way?"

"Only the ones that affect my thoughts, rather than my physical actions. And I doubt you'll be able to come up with a way to safeguard my bloody brain. By definition, the compulsion ensures that I'm"—his lip curls in disgust—"malleable for you."

She cups a hand over her mouth, not sure what to say. Or do. Or feel. Nausea coils.

"Detective, I'm … quite tired," he admits.

"No. No, wait. There has to be a way to fix this."

The defeated look he gives her breaks her into pieces. "Lucifer, I want you to choose whether to forgive me more than I want to be forgiven," she dictates into the iPad. He sighs—the sound is clipped and tiny and demoralized—but he says nothing. "I want you to choose whether you love or like me more than I want you to _actually_ love or like me. I want you to choose whether you believe me more than I want you to actually believe me. I want you to choose whether to comfort or reassure me more than I want to be comforted or reassured. And I want you to choose whether you agree with me more than I want you to kowtow. Always."

"That may help for those specific scenarios," he says, "but what happens when—" 

"It's better than what we had before!" 

He deigns to nod. "True, I suppose."

"I know it's not much consolation."

The floor creaks as his weight shifts. He regards her with sharp, unclouded eyes, holding her gaze without blinking for so long his otherworldly countenance skydives him into Uncanny Valley. "Detective, my consolation in all of this is _you_. You are the only reason I haven't gone bloody well berserk already. I've … faith in you."

Faith. 

In her.

"Oh." Her chest aches. She sucks in a breath, unable to stop the deluge. " _Oh._ " 

The space between them might as well be a canyon. He closes his eyes, breaths gusting, temples bulging as his jaw clenches. Like he's closer to going berserk than he wants to admit. Stalking to the patio door, he retreats into the night, where he sinks to his knees by the corner of the fence, curling up like a scared rat in a cage. The dim light cast by the living room emphasizes how pale he is. Outlines his trembling. He's not at all like the blustering full-of-swagger man she'd met four years ago. _None_ of this is natural. 

The muscle behind her eye jumps again. 

She looks away. 

* * *

Trixie is curled in a tiny ball, her pillow clutched over her head, Dan's expensive headphones cupped over her ears like earmuffs. Chloe taps her on the shoulder.

"Is it over?" Trixie says, eyes wide and pleading and hopeful as she pulls down the headphones. 

"I'm sorry," Chloe replies, wrapping her in a tight hug. She kisses the top of Trixie's head. "I'm so sorry you had to hear any of that."

"Mom, how come everybody's _fighting_?" 

Chloe strokes Trixie's hair, smoothing the loose strands one by one. "We're all just tired, yeah? And stressed. And tempers are short."

"Because of _him_ ," Trixie grumbles, her fingers pulling up tents of Chloe's shirt. 

"Babe, it's more complicated than that."

"How long's he staying?"

"I don't know."

"Does he _have_ to be here?"

"Yeah, he does, babe," Chloe says, hugging Trixie closer. "He doesn't have a home right now, and he's sick. He's been in a lot of pain the past few days."

"He yelled cuz he's hurting?"

"A little bit, yeah."

Trixie frowns, a flicker of concern lighting in her brown eyes. "Does he have _cancer_?"

"What? No. No, he's not dying. He's just having a rough time right now."

Without replying, Trixie heaves a dramatic sigh, extricating herself enough to flop back onto the bed. 

Chloe scoots closer, the mattress shifting with her weight. She rests a palm on Trixie's arm. "Other than the fighting—which I'm sorry you had to hear, and I'm _sure_ Lucifer is, too—can you tell me why you're not excited to see him?" Honestly, Chloe had assumed Trixie would be a frenetic bundle of joy about Lucifer's reappearance, or Chloe would have called Dan to warn them. 

But Trixie only shrugs.

"Hey," Chloe murmurs. "You can talk to me, you know."

"He made you sad."

"Babe, that was just a disagree—"

"No, _before_. Everything was fine, and then he _left_! He _left_ us!" 

Chloe blinks. Before. "Oh. Oh, babe, I hope you know he didn't leave to hurt us. Not me _or_ you. There were other things going on." 

"He left!" Trixie repeats, blinking out tears. 

"He did," Chloe says softly. "And it's okay to be upset about that. But it's also important to realize sometimes things go wrong despite the best of intentions. And I might say things. And Lucifer might say things. We both have feelings, and feelings can get hurt when stuff like this happens. But there's no bad guy here, yeah?"

"That's what you said about Dad."

"Well, it was true for Dad, too."

Trixie sniffles, curling closer. Chloe rubs her back. Cards her fingers through Trixie's hair. 

"He's really homeless?" Trixie warbles into her pillow.

"Yeah, he is."

"What happened to his penthouse? I liked it."

"He kept the building, but he sold everything in it. He didn't think he was coming back." The words hurt to say. To admit. He didn't think he was coming back. Not in Chloe's lifetime, anyway. She takes a shaky breath. "I don't think he'd be here if he didn't really need our help."

 _He wouldn't_ , her tiny voice says. _This is temporary. He'll leave you as soon as this is fixed, and you'll never see him again. Ever._

"Don't be sad, Mom," Trixie whispers. 

With a sniff, Chloe straightens, forcing a brittle, hurting smile across her face. "I'm fine, sweetheart." She leans down to kiss Trixie's forehead. "Everything will be fine. Do you want me to read you a story or something?"

"Nah," Trixie says listlessly. "I just wanna sleep."

"I can _so_ relate," Chloe admits as she stands up. The space behind her eyes ebbs and flows like sludge crammed into tiny pipes. Acetaminophen looms in her future. Maybe some ibuprofen, too. "Night, Trix." 

"Mom, what happened to all my artwork?"

"We had a small ... um." Boy, how to explain that one. "We had an accident in the kitchen." 

Trixie gives her a doubtful look. "A _small_ accident?" 

"Slightly larger than small," Chloe admits.

Trixie's frown intensifies. "Did Lucifer try to make flambé for you again?"

"Um." Chloe can't stop the tired chuckle that pops loose at the wayward memory. Years ago, now. When they'd still done things like play Monopoly after work, and he would occasionally attempt to feed her. The torch had been busted, and he'd assured her with a wink, _Well, I've my bloody wings back, now. Surely, I can smite again, yes?_ He'd flipped the switch on the torch once more, and nearly incinerated her whole range. At the time, she'd thought the lighter had malfunctioned, but— She claps her hand over her mouth, realizing he'd been telling the truth in that moment. He had wings. He could smite. And apparently butane torches don't respond well to holy fire. "Something like that, yeah."

"You should tell Lucifer not to do that anymore if he's gonna be living here." 

"Definitely," Chloe replies, flashing a real smile before she turns off the light. 

"Night, Mom," Trixie calls, and Chloe gently closes the door.

* * *

The night is deep and dark. Lucifer's still on the patio, only visible thanks to Dan's dingy red hoodie, his body huddled in a nondescript lump beyond the sharp edge of light flooding from the house's interior. At first, she thinks to leave him be. But … _we shouldn't go to bed mad,_ she'd said. And then everything had gotten derailed like a train jumping tracks into a ditch.

The sliding door rumbles as she pushes it open. A soft, chilly breeze ruffles her hair. "Lucifer, do you need anything?" she whispers. "Can I help you at all?"

"No," he replies, sounding distant. "Or … perhaps turn out the light while you're there."

"Are you gonna sleep out there?"

Reaching back, she turns off the switch, which darkens the living room, and plunges the patio into inky blackness. As her eyes adjust, his form resolves from a dark smudge to a man. To him. Her Devil. He's not huddled, after all, only resting with his back flat against the fence, his knees peaking in front of his chest. His fingers are steepled, the edges of his hands perched against his kneecaps. 

She follows his gaze, up, up. The Los Angeles night sky is purple hued with light pollution, but a few bright stars—planets?—peek through the haze. Her lips part as awe rolls over her like a wave. An archangel is praying on her patio.

"I," she says, turning away, "I didn't mean to disturb you." 

"I meant what I said, Detective," he calls before she can close the slider behind her. "That you're my consolation." His feet scrape against the paverstone as he shifts. The fence creaks. "Tomorrow will be better."

"I"— _hope so_ , she stops herself from saying, from commanding—"yeah." 

"Well, it'd be difficult to get worse unless we're bloody _trying_ ," he snarks.

She laughs. "You know, I'm thinking it might be helpful if you _don't jinx us_."

"Then I stand corrected." His tone is lukewarm—bright heat made tepid by exhaustion. "I'm certain tomorrow will be worse than we could possibly imagine." But she'll take lukewarm over cool or cold, and she'll definitely take it over a rolling boil of anger and frustration.

Her smile hurts. "Goodnight, Lucifer."

"Goodnight, Detective." 

She closes the door, leaving it open a crack, just so it's abundantly clear to his compulsion she's not shutting him out. Then she heads to her medicine cabinet for the painkillers she's been fantasizing about. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. I posted a [super fluffy outtake](https://ariaadagio.tumblr.com/post/628713198117388288/trivia-tuesday-for-each-ecstatic-instant) from this story for anyone who's interested.


	8. "not really feeling it today"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the lovely feedback! I'm continually thrilled to receive all your thoughts/reactions/love :)
> 
> For anyone who's interested, I've been posting a bunch of teeny little previews for this story on [my Twitter](https://twitter.com/ariaadagio/status/1304520740591398912).

In Hell, sense of time is the first thing to go.

Perdition has no sunrises. No sunsets. No cycles of any kind. No change. Only constants: heat, darkness, stench, and endlessness. 

He spends his first piece of eternity perched on his Greater Throne. No stars fill the sky, only a canopy of swirling ash clouds. The idea of holding court with a bunch of pre-Earth Mazikeens—sadists, hedonists, all, and not an ounce of warmth beyond body heat between them—wraps a fist around his heart and won't stop squeezing, fills his throat with an interminable, aching lump. The demons scurry and swarm below, gathering to genuflect and prostrate themselves, until the crowd is smashed too close together, and rabble becomes a writhing, thrashing orgy-murder bath. 

The ache worsens, and he looks away. To the distant, dark horizon shaped by jagged rock. A curdling scream pelts him from the masses below, though whether the sound is from coming or dying remains unclear.

His only companions. 

For the rest of time.

He'll have to interact with them at some point. 

But … not now. 

Not yet. 

Now, he'd rather be a silent sight for all, a message, a decree, a _warning_ : 

Satan has returned. 

No misbehavior will be tolerated. No _possessions_ will be permitted.

The falling ash snuffs what flicker of optimism still burned within him. Hot gray flakes stinking of brimstone dust his hair. Stain his skin. Smear his suit. 

He'll have to change soon into more appropriate attire. Hell has no dry-cleaning for his beloved black Prada.

Still, he sits on his throne, his brain emptying out like a water glass as he pours himself into drifting without thinking. He moves only to sweep away the reeking ash and stretch his aching wings. 

For days.

Weeks.

Or longer. 

* * *

When he holds his first court, a rowdy line of demons winds out the front door of the lesser throne room, through the gates, across Strife, and into the treacherous rock faces that cut through the Screaming Cliffs. He sees them all, one by one by one. 

They quaver and cry and kiss his ring. 

"If you dare possess someone, I will _end_ you," he tells them. " _Do_ not. Make me end you." 

And every single one of them thanks him for the threat. 

There is no change in Hell. 

Until, "My, _my_ , my king." The word king is spoken with subtle humor, almost sarcasm, not quite disdain. "I suppose, if you insist, I can perhaps behave." His focus drifts from the distant double door to her. She smiles sweetly. "But only just this once, on this one matter."

"Lilith," he says, barely holding back a sigh. "You're human."

"Really?" She gasps. "I'd no idea." 

"You've no capability to possess any—"

"Is that so?"

He glowers. "Have you a point?" 

She stands before him, naked, her long black hair flowing behind her body to mid thigh. Her skin is unadorned by anything other than a tattoo that cups the undersides of her breasts—a shackled, human-like creature with its wings spread, its face contorted in a primal scream, its curled, clawed toes coming to a point above her navel. She is shameless. A quality he usually finds endearing in humans, but manifested in her ….

His empty stomach twists.

"Welcome back, Lucifer," she says, bowing. When she kisses his ring finger, she licks, pressing back with her curling, wet tongue as she pulls away. "I'm glad for your return. I've missed you oh so much. Shall we resume where we left off?"

He resists the urge to wipe his hand on his sleeve. "One cannot resume what's never been started."

Her laugh sounds like breaking glass. "Yes, yes, I know. But I had to try, no?"

"No. As always."

"Well, then," she says, standing up again. "Shall I leave you to your _congregation_?"

"This is not a house of worship," he replies tersely.

"Isn't it?"

He shows her teeth. "I don't appreciate your tattoo. Is it new?"

"Oh, it's a harpy, Lucifer," she purrs, stroking herself from cleavage to navel, "not an angel." 

"Does the subject of it matter, if I'm displeased?"

"Surely, you wouldn't tell me to remove it." She inspects a long, pointed nail, picking at her cuticle. "Would that not impinge my … free will?"

"Get out. Now."

"Will you come?" she asks with a laugh.

He snaps to his feet, his newly returned white wings flaring wide. "Out," he booms, pointing to the door. " _All_ of you." 

Her disaffected sigh sets fire to what little is left of his calm, but she turns before he can snarl. She goes. 

They all do.

There is no change in Hell.

* * *

Lucifer's new favorite cell door opens into Astoria, NY, near the Steinway & Sons factory. He visits often, not because of the foreman who murdered his husband in their tiny row house a few blocks away, but because of the beautiful Model D concert grand, constructed lovingly from East Indian rosewood over a year-long process. 

He sits in the bright showroom, wishing he had cigarettes, wishing he had gin or scotch, wishing he had _anything_ to take the edge off his simmering desperation. 

"Thinking of buying, sir?" says the salesman with a smile. 

"No," Lucifer replies, as he ekes out the first bars of the Moonlight Sonata from the protesting keyboard. The bench creaks as he fights with the stubbornness of the key action. The piano should be perfect. The notes should sing. But they don't. Every string has a twang to it, every tone a wrong resonance that sets his teeth on edge. "The real version of this piano—the version I would buy in a heartbeat—is already in a concert hall somewhere, being played and loved by humans I should never hope to meet. And this loop will reset before I've made it to the second movement anyway."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Apropos," Lucifer says glumly. "The second movement is much happier, and I confess, I'm not really feeling it today."

"But—"

The showroom dissolves. Lucifer's wings flare as he catches himself from falling onto his ass. The foreman, having just arrived, had received a furious call from his husband and rushed home to commit murder. The Steinway factory and the should-be-perfect Model D exist only for moments before they're gone again, replaced by scenery closer to the crime, and then, once the loop resets, by weeks of claustrophobic couples therapy, bursting at the seams with pain and ugliness. The foreman had taken leave beforehand to "work things out." 

The piano won't return for some time. 

Perhaps Lucifer should visit Galileo next. Drive the knife deeper with stars that might as well be cardboard cutouts covered in cheap glitter. Scowling, he leaves the cell, exiting into Death's Rows.

"You always come here," says Lilith, waiting for him in the ash-filled hall. "Why?"

"And you always bloody _stalk_ me," he snaps back at her. "Why?"

He half expects her to smile not-so-coyly and step aside, as she always does, but this time she stands her ground. "Looking futilely for something different, I suppose."

"And what would that be?"

"You, my king," she says, shrugging. "You always say no. You've said no from the moment you landed in the lake of fire, crying out for God. From Samael the Lightbringer to Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, you've never once wavered." 

He stiffens. "What of it?"

"Nothing changes here. Ever. The day you cease denying me will be interesting." Brushing her hair away from her face, she pushes closer. "I miss feeling interested. Don't you?"

With a scoff, he shoves past her. "Leave me be, Lilith."

"Or what?" she calls after him, pursuing. "You'll punish me? I already _am_ punished for wanting what I want. For being who I am. That's why I'm here. Why _you're_ here."

His heart aches when his mind wanders to Chloe. He wonders if she's happy. If she's aged, or if she's gone. "I'm here now," he says, "because I bloody well choose to be. I'm done with eternal punishment."

"How lucky for you." She laughs, though the sound is as bitter as fresh bay leaves. "Meanwhile, I'm trapped here for the same sin you claimed: free will."

"At least, Dad's consistent."

"Except for the part where you can always leave, and I cannot."

Lucifer has no retort for that. 

She steps closer, her strides sinuous, a small smile twisting at her sharp features and wide black eyes. Her fingers drift up the arm of his tunic. "I have to amuse myself, somehow."

"We all do," he admits.

She glances at the door he'd used. "Is that what you're doing in all these shrines to guilt and pain? Amusing yourself with memories and phantasms?"

He doesn't lie, so he doesn't speak.

"I'm not a memory," she counters. "I'm real, and I'm here." She pats her palm against his sternum as though to mimic a heartbeat. "We could be good together. We could _change_ things—change _everything_. This place needn't be a prison."

Gripping her wrist, he extends the distance between them to the length of his arm. "Lilith, no." 

"But—"

" _Please_ ," he says softly. "Leave me be."

A smug, predatory smile creeps across her features. "Ah. So the Devil begs me. Perhaps, some things do change."

"Lilith—"

But she holds up her hands, backing away. "Relax, my king. That's victory enough, for now." She sashays down the hall, grinning. 

* * *

"Bloody ash!" he hisses in frustration, coughing when it billows into his face. 

Despite the shelter provided by his palace, volcanic dust gets _everywhere_. It cakes into his furniture. Infuses with his linens. Stops up his pores. Tangles into his hair. Even smears through his feathers, whenever his desperation to spread his wings eclipses his desire not to beleaguer them with sulfur-stench and black filth. 

He hasn't felt clean since Earth.

Roaring, he snatches the dirty blankets off his bed. The soiled sheets. The ash-stained pillows. He flings them against his wall. Another dark cloud of particulates jettisons into the air. The sight of it saps his anger and replaces it with something worse: a crushing tightness in his chest that makes it difficult to breathe.

"My king," a gravelly, sibilant voice says behind him.

"What is it?" Lucifer asks. 

The little demon cowering before him—Squee—is waif-like, his body thin and frail-looking, his facial features reminiscent of a turtle. Distressed, he shows his needle-like teeth before burrowing into his age-worn, ash-dusted cloak. "I … am sorry, my king."

"For what?"

Long, pale fingers clutch the seam of the hood. "There is … a demonstration. Outside the gates."

That's new. "What kind of demonstration?" 

"I"—stressed, high-pitched rasping fills the quiet—"do not think you will approve, sire."

"Why?"

"You most recent edict," Squee confesses, almost flattening to the floor in his effort to prostrate himself. "They ignore it."

"Oh, do they?" 

"Yes. Gleefully, sire. But I _promise,_ I would never."

"Of course you wouldn't," Lucifer says, smiling without feeling. "This is why nobody likes you, Squee. Because you're a snitch." 

"Thank you, my king."

"Step aside."

Squee scrambles out of the way, his claws clicking against black marble, as Lucifer stalks past. He prowls out of his chambers, down the massive staircase, and into the front hall that leads to the lesser throne room. Instead of taking a right, though, he heads left, through the wrought-iron doors, into the Hellscape beyond. Volcanic glass snaps and shatters under the strike of his boots as he passes through the barren yard and out the portcullis.

Lilith perches above Traitor's Noose Rock, her arms raised like a prophet for a jeering crowd. "My children," she says, "you have the same right to free will as I do. As Lucifer does. As anyone should. Do not let yourselves be oppressed. Do not be afraid to accept the tide of _change_."

"Lilith," he shouts, injecting Word into each syllable. The glass around them cracks. Vibrates. The demonic crowd parts for him, dozens of beady black eyes averting as he steps into their midst. He wishes Word worked as well on willful humans. "What is this? What are you bloody on about, now?"

"Possession, Lucifer! Why have you forbidden it?" She puts her hands on her hips, peering down at him. "It's not as though it's stealing. The dead have no need of such material things as flesh. They're _dead_."

In the back of the crowd, a few brave demons cheer and clap until he glares in their direction.

"I've no care for what Lilim do to bodies," he replies, the words echoing and amplifying. "I care what they'll do to the living whilst _using_ those bodies. Demons do not belong on Earth."

"Oh? And what of my dearest Mazikeen?" 

"Mazikeen isn't dear to you. _None_ of your children are dear to you."

"That isn't true."

"Hell has twisted your mind."

"Don't change the subject, Lucifer," she dares to say. "Tell us, why is Mazikeen allowed on the surface?"

"Disperse!" he commands them.

"Do not listen to him!"

Something inside him snaps like a twig. His wings flare, and he flashes to the top of Traitor's Noose. The stone cracks with his weight. He flaps his wings to balance, gripping her arm, dragging her back from the edge. " _Disperse_ ," he calls over the crowd, a word that is Word, terrible and True. 

No demon dare defy. 

They scurry away like frightened ants, into the dark crevices of the world. He marches Lilith down from the Noose, to the broken ground below. "Do not incite them, Lilith," he says. "I do not wish you to incite them!" 

She smiles at him, empty and cold. "Why, Lucifer, I'm only proving a point to you."

"Dare I ask," he says tiredly.

Her grin widens. "Unless you seek Hell on Earth, my king, you're as trapped as I am." She takes his ring and kisses it, and then she walks away, her bare feet bleeding and raw, though she doesn't seem to notice.

He squeezes his eyes shut, counting to ten, and then twenty, and then more. His chest aches. His body aches. He doesn't remember what it's like to enjoy things or be happy. He wishes only to sleep. That's why he'd been trying to clean off his bloody bed in the first place.

He presses his palms together, his wings fanning wide. _I hope you're well_ , he thinks at the Detective. _I hope you're happy and fulfilled._ He shifts his thoughts toward Amenadiel. _Please, brother, tell her I'm all right, if she asks._ Not a lie, technically, if he's not the one to speak it. 

The ash falls like snow as he retreats to the Greater Throne, high in the billowing clouds where no one, not even Lilith, can bother him. He spreads his great white wings, letting the hot sulfuric winds ruffle his feathers. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend he's on the beach, and the blowing ash is only sand. He can almost hear the gulls, and the crack and crash of waves. He can feel the press of her lips against his. He aches for the scent of salt and sea. For the silk of her skin to slide underneath his fingertips as he caresses her neck. For _anything_ that would make this place less Hellish.

Time passes. 

Eternity.

When he wakes, he's still exhausted. Aching. Sapped. He shakes off his wings, expecting another choking cloud of volcanic dust to blow into every orifice, but only silica shakes free. Quickly, too, like sand shaken from an everyday beach towel. 

He frowns. 

But he has things to do, and he doesn't linger.


	9. "About the bucket"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought you guys might appreciate a double header today :) Enjoy!

She wakes to a chipper text from Dan. _Mamita says hola_. _She hopes you're doing well._

A night's rest had nixed her headache, though her eyelids feel sticky with sleep, and she _really_ wishes Lucifer hadn't fried her coffeemaker.

 _Thanks! Same! Tell her Happy pre-Thanksgiving for me!_ she replies, not firing on enough cylinders to think of more, and then heads into the bathroom to get ready. 

About an hour later, Lucifer is still sleeping on her patio, propped into the corner by the sage bush, his arms hugged around his knees. Crackling, fallen leaf bits from the Crape Myrtle beyond her fence stick into his hair and litter his sweatshirt. His limbs twitch as though he's dreaming again. She hates to wake him when he seems to need sleep, but— 

"Mom, we're _late_ ," Trixie yells from the living room, and Lucifer flinches off the fence like someone slapped him.

"What," he says, half question, half indignant rasp.

Chloe bites her lip in a guilty grimace. "Morning," she says softly. The air is crisp and dry, cold enough to make her shiver in the shade, but not enough for her breath to be visible. "We're late, apparently." 

He rubs his eyes without opening them, a curdled, unhappy groan loitering in his throat. "Late for what? What bloody time is it?"

"6:45."

"Who the bloody hell gets up at 6:45."

"Kids in school?" she says. "People who work? People who didn't go to bed at 6:42?"

"I didn't bloody go to bed at 6:42!"

"You're on my patio, Lucifer. You didn't go to bed at _all_."

He sniffs, grumbling something about, "fuck mornings," and, "worst bloody invention Dad ever," and then something about Hell, clogs, and jean skorts. Possibly taxes, too. She gives up trying to decipher him, instead hiding her amused grin behind her palm.

"Do you want to shower before we go," she asks, "or …?" 

"Go?"

"Mom!" Trixie whines. "Luciferrr! Come _on_!"

Lucifer sighs. "If the child's insistence is any indication, it would seem there isn't time."

Chloe folds her arms. "She can wait a few minutes."

"What's the bloody point." 

"Lucifer …."

But he waves her off dismissively before rubbing his face, blinking like his eyelids are stuck together with tar. His palm rasps against his stubble. When he stands, he seems … almost rickety. He doesn't move with any grace as he brushes the detritus from his shoulders and picks at his disheveled hair, throwing leaf bits to and fro. They head inside.

"Guh!" he shouts indignantly when Trixie wraps herself around him. 

"Morning, Lucifer," she says, clutching him. "I hope you feel better today!" 

"Thank … you?" 

"Yup!" She blows a kiss at him before bounding away. "Race you to the car!" 

Her pink backpack flops against her shoulder as she skips over the threshold. The front door hits the stop with a thwack and recoils, quick at first, then slow, before it drifts to a halt, the metal lock catching on the doorframe, but not enough to depress. 

"… What?" Lucifer asks.

"She said she hopes you feel better," Chloe says, smiling. 

"Well, yes, I got that part, but—" His eyebrows knit. _But_ _what_ , he never says as he surrenders to his confusion. 

His thick swath of stubble, too-pale skin, and the dark smudges under his eyes make him seem old. Washed out. But at least the mottled ghost of strangulation isn't wrapped around his neck anymore. When he reaches to rub his face again, his sleeves slide down enough to reveal that his wrists have healed, too. 

"Off to see if I've a brain, then?" he asks.

"Well, primarily," she replies, "I want to convey my child to school, but yes. Sorry you didn't get to sleep in."

He shrugs, giving the patio a wincing appraisal. "It's no matter. I"—he blinks—" _what_ race to the bloody car?"

"Mom! Lucifer!" Trixie calls, the words echoing from somewhere distant. "Come _ooon_!" 

"I think she won already," Chloe says, offering him a wry look.

"That devious little _minx_!" he marvels with a tired-sounding laugh. "Hardly old enough to be a half-decent glass of scotch, and she's already machinating." 

Chloe snorts with amusement as they head out the door.

* * *

"I can't see any wires, can you, Mike? Wow, look at it go!"

"I'm sure it's Photosh—"

Lucifer switches off the radio, easing against the seat as Chloe zips around a FedEx truck pulling over to park. "You humans fixate on the silliest things," he says. The bright morning sun stabs her eyes despite her sunglasses, and she keeps having to squint to see where the hell she's going. "Have you nothing better to do?"

"You don't think it's real?" Trixie replies from the backseat.

Lucifer rolls his eyes. "I don't think, child; I know."

Her expression falls. "Ghosts aren't real?" 

"Ella was wondering that, too," Chloe says. 

"Was she? Hmm." He glances at the rearview mirror, meeting Trixie's eyes in the glass. "Not as you conceive them, no," he concedes with a regal nod. "They certainly wouldn't haunt a house long enough to be caught faffing about with one's appliances. Perhaps a one-off, I'd grant. But they implied this is a repeat offender."

"Five times this weekend!" Trixie chirps.

"Precisely," he replies, biting into the word with his pearly teeth. "It's rubbish."

Chloe navigates to the curb. "We're here, babe."

Santa Ana Middle School looms in the distance, beyond a sprawling, cultivated quad. Busses idle in the driveway, their grumbling engines underlining the sounds of cherubic voices and laughter. Kids scurry everywhere. 

"Later, Mom," Trixie says as she gathers her things and climbs out onto the sidewalk. She turns to wave, her sneakers scuffing the pavement. "Bye, Lucifer!" Then she dashes off to meet her friends.

Lucifer presses his elbow against the window sill, leaning. "Must we get this MRI thing done now? I've a headache." 

"That might actually be relevant to your memory loss."

"Or it might mean I'm exhausted because I slept in a bloody bush."

"Why _did_ you sleep in a bloody bush?" she replies as she pulls away from the curb.

"Well, I didn't _elect_ to. I simply … rested my eyes whilst I was praying, and I suppose I shifted off the paverstone."

"Mmm-hmm." She grins, but her mirth fades like a flashbulb winking out. "Any luck on the prayer front?"

"None. I don't understand it. Unless he fell again, but why would he have?"

"We'll find him," she decides with a nod.

"Oh? So certain?"

"You came back. I have to believe he'll come back, too."

Lucifer offers no opinion on that, instead choosing to watch in silence as rush-hour traffic inches by the window like racing turtles. The quiet is comfortable, though. Not tense. Having him ride shotgun in her car again feels like coming home. And if he notices her lingering at stoplights after they've gone green, or driving slightly under the speed limit to prolong the experience, he doesn't say. 

* * *

The waiting room at the imaging center is medium-sized.

Two rows of four chairs, back to back, fill the middle of the space. Chairs also line the walls, tables covered in magazines filling the corners. The air smells faintly of patchouli, and a small, bright flatscreen perched on the wall flashes CNN with subtitles. 

The receptionist is a frazzled-looking man wearing periwinkle-colored scrubs. "Can I help you?" he says as he leafs through a stack of papers. 

"Yeah, we're here for an MRI?" Chloe says. "Or, well, he's here for one." She jabs her thumb in Lucifer's direction. "I'm just the … um … moral support."

"Yes," Lucifer purrs, "she's my literal tether, aren't you, darling?"

The receptionist looks up, glancing briefly at Chloe before his eyes come to rest on Lucifer. His lips part, and he blinks like he's been stunned stupid. "Hello there, Mr. …?"

"Lucifer. Morningstar."

The receptionist's smitten look cracks around the edges, subsumed by a humoring smile and a nod. "Mr. Morningstar. Yes." _Great. One of_ those _,_ he doesn't say. He types something on his keyboard, nodding when he finds the relevant information. "Mr. Morningstar, do you have your insurance card and identification with you?"

"Why would I need insurance?" Lucifer replies. "I'm literally bombproof, and I've more money than God." 

"Well, you're here, aren't you?" 

Lucifer leans against the lip of the desk. "Can't you … oh, what do they call it … bill me later? I assure you, I'm good for it."

"This is an expensive test, sir."

Lucifer's energy changes. "I'm certain we can make an equitable deal for it, yes? Tell me, what is it you desire?"

"Sir, you can't barter for an MRI." 

"But—"

"Here," Chloe says, fishing her credit card out of her wallet. "Just … just charge it to here." 

Lucifer gives her a sharp look. "Detective—"

"Do you have a checkbook squirreled away somewhere you haven't mentioned?"

His fingers clench. "None of my assets would be liquid at the moment. I wasn't expecting to return for quite some time." 

"Well, they're not gonna do this without money up front, and you could be hurt. You _need_ this." 

He scowls. "I'm here, am I not?" 

"Sign here, please," says the receptionist, handing her a curling paper receipt. She can hardly keep her grimace at bay when she sees the $8,975.47 bill. She scrawls her signature on the line at the bottom and stuffs the carbon copy into her purse, trying not to think too hard about the fact she could have bought a car, instead. The receptionist foists at Lucifer a clipboard stuffed with forms, along with a pen attached to a chain. "Thank you. Please, fill out all the necessary information. Your name will be called shortly." 

Glowering, Lucifer follows Chloe to the chairs to sit. 

"Look, I know you'll pay me back, okay?" she assures him. "I know it. Don't—" Don't worry, she was going to say, almost leaping straight into another pile of semantical quicksand. God, damn it. "I'm not worried."

"I've no desire to be a burden."

"You're not," she says. "This is what friends do, yeah?"

He shifts his attention to the clipboard. The top page is a health history form, covered in yes/no checkboxes listing various conditions. He writes his name. Lists, "Dad knows," as his birthday. Adds, "Impossible to be defined by the human concept of time," as his age, at which point Chloe is fighting not to groan. Address, "Throne of Hell," is what gets her, finally, and she cradles her face in her hands, peering at his progress through the cracks between her fingertips. He looks at her. Frowns. Says, "Yes, I suppose you're right," with a sigh. He crosses off, "Throne of Hell," and replaces it with, "the Detective's couch/patio, Venice Beach, CA." 

He goes down the list, checking things off. No heart conditions. No tumors. No pacemaker. No anemia. No stroke. No current pregnancy. No, no, no. 

"I think yes to that one," she whispers when he seems like he's about to check no for epilepsy/seizures.

Nodding, he continues onward, marking yes for headaches, and yes for inpatient psychiatric treat—

"Lucifer, going undercover at a mental hospital doesn't count."

He crosses off that yes and changes it to no, then checks yes to the box for "sleep problems/insomnia." Yes for "often unhappy/depressed." Yes for "emotional difficulties." The box for "recreational drug and alcohol use," he checks off yes, then circles it three times, then stars it. At the end of the section, the line says, "Other: ___" 

"Is this where I should mention I've died twice?" he wonders.

She snorts. "Um. I … I don't think that's relevant for this."

His pen drifts down the page. "List all medications, supplements, or vitamins taken within the past two years?" he mutters, reading. "But I don't know where I've bloody been." 

"You could talk about the last two years you remember on Earth?"

"I'd need more bloody paper."

"Maybe skip that one, if you want."

He regards the form for a moment. In the column for drug name, he lists, "Everything." And in the column for purpose/reason, he writes, "Fun." He beams at her. "For accuracy's sake." And then he flips the page. "Oh, family history. This should be amusing."

* * *

They're led into a small examination room filled by a gurney and a metal sink. Chloe smooshes herself against the counter, out of the way. The nurse tells Lucifer to sit on the edge of the bed and then asks for his arm. 

"My what?" Lucifer says. The rasp and tear of loosening velcro fills the quiet, and he flinches away from the movement, just at the corner of his eye. 

"I'm only checking your blood pressure, sir," the nurse assures him. 

Lucifer takes a tiny breath. "Ah." He holds out his arm.

The nurse—a fifty-something salt-and-pepper-haired man named Jonathan—rolls up Lucifer's sleeve and wraps the cuff around his bicep. "All right?" 

"Yes."

The pressure cuff hisses and fills with air. Lucifer grips the sheets with his free hand. Jonathan watches the monitor with a frown as the cuff empties. "Sir, are you nervous?

"What gives you that impression?" 

"Not to worry, sir. I'll check again in a bit." The nurse smiles as he collects the pressure cuff and hangs it back on the stand. "Are you claustrophobic?"

"Why would that be relevant?"

"The MRI machine will be close to your face and shoulders." 

"You think I'm afraid of having a bloody bucket stuck on my head?" Lucifer scoffs. 

"More like a barrel. And I didn't say that at all, sir," Jonathan replies, his voice soothing. He turns toward Lucifer's chart to make a notation. "Listen, you'll have to take off your—" Lucifer stands, kicking off his flip-flops. In one swift, undulating motion, his warmups are pooling at his ankles, and his hoodie is crumpled on the pillow. The _My Little Pony_ Band-Aids he stuck on top of Maze's handiwork are his only layer left. "Right, then," continues Jonathan breezily as Chloe's face heats to molten, and she averts her attention to a pain-scale chart hanging on the nearest wall. "So, there's a gown. It ties in the back. You'll need to remove those piercings. Can't have anything metal near the machine. Do you need pliers for that? We have a kit, somewhere."

"I'll manage," Lucifer grits out.

"Okay, then," says Jonathan. "I'll step out for a few minutes to give you a chance to get ready."

The screech of a curtain closing follows. Then the thump of the door opening. Shutting. Then quiet. 

Chloe's gaze drifts toward the ceiling. One of the tiles has a crack in it. There's a funny stain on the light fixture, too. Not mold or mildew or anything. Just age discoloration. She tilts her head, scrutinizing. Cloth rustles. 

"Detective."

"Should I go into the hall?" she asks.

"No, I … I …."

She winces. "Are you still naked?"

"Yes."

"Lucif—"

"Oh, what does it even matter?" he snaps. "It's not as though you've not seen me before."

"It's just …." With a sigh, she braces herself and looks at him. She will not let her gaze fall below his neck. She will _not._ Blush creeps across his cheeks and down his throat. His dark eyes froth like a storm-bashed sea. "What's wrong?"

At first, he can only pull back his upper lip and snarl soundlessly at her. He looks almost ill. And then he's the one looking at the ceiling, at the stupid pain-scale poster covered in sad faces—anywhere but at her—as he gestures vaguely to his nipples. "Please, will you permit me to remove …?"

Oh, fuck. "I thought you'd _chosen_ to—"

"What, stab myself through with Hell-forged metal? Leave holes in my body I'm constantly trying to heal around but can't?" He expels a huffy breath. "No, Detective, I didn't choose this. I would _never_ choose this. Piercings are a nuisance for me, at best."

"But I thought I'd made it so you can wear what you want."

"Yes," he enunciates. " _Clothes from your closet_. And your stipulation that I be allowed to use or not use anyone or anything I wish apparently does not extend to items that are worn."

"Oh. Yes. Yes, take the nipple rings off, please. And the …." She can't help looking down again. At the arched, silver-colored barbell that's been punched into the underside of his penis and pushed out through his urethra. It's concealed, somewhat, because he's uncircumcised, but … her stomach roils. "The Prince Albert." Her eyes are hot and hurting, and the room blurs.

"Detective—"

"Don't," she snaps, holding up her hands. "Don't comfort me. I'm just …." She can't breathe. Her fingers shake. "What kind of sick person would force you to—" 

"Lilith." He seems … more certain, now, than he had been. The metal-sounding thunk as he tosses the first nipple ring into the biohazard bin makes her cringe. "She used to be lovely, but Hell twisted her mind like a bloody pretzel." Stress floods her body as the second nipple ring goes into the bin. "I don't recall this being done, if it's any consolation."

"But you do remember Lilith now?"

"She … had a new tattoo," he says in a dull, almost hypnotized tone. "I didn't like it."

"What tattoo?"

"A harpy." He flinches like he lost his body for a moment, only to find it again in the jaws of a ravenous crocodile. "I … I'd rather not discuss it."

"Okay," she whispers. 

Keep his stress levels _low,_ Linda had said. 

He regards her, eyes narrowing in calculation before he turns away, and all she can see is the corded muscles in his back and butt and quads. His elbows shift. His shoulder blades glide underneath his skin. He grunts like something hurt him, and then exhales—relief?—before turning to face her again. 

She doesn't ever see the last curved hunk of metal. She doesn't even see him move to dispose of it. She only hears the thick barbell land in the biohazard bin with a resounding thud. He grabs the folded hospital johnny off the foot of the gurney and dons it in a fluid motion, though even the Devil can't make one of those silly gowns look sexy. She helps him fasten the ties in the back, since he can't reach without contorting. Her fingers won't stop shaking.

"Would you like to touch me?" he says softly over his shoulder.

"No!"

An amused look tugs at his austere expression. "Not my fun bits, Detective. I meant … would you like to embrace me?"

"Do you want me to?"

He turns before pressing his nose close to her hair, but not nuzzling into it. "Truth be told," he admits, "I am … somewhat trepidatious."

She looks up at him. "About me hugging you?"

"About the bucket." 

What had _happened_ to him?

She imagines him locked in a tiny closet somewhere, alone, in the dark, wearing nothing but the piercings Lilith—or whoever—forced into him, until she needed her slave again. Chloe hurts as the awful picture unfurls across her mind's eye like licking flames. She wraps her arms low around his waist and pulls him close. He doesn't stiffen or panic like he did for Linda, but she murmurs, "This okay?" anyway.

His posture relaxes, and a soft, humming sound rumbles through him. "Yes, I …." He shifts, embracing her, and adds a soft, "Please," into her hair, for once the word not weighted down with the urgency of begging. Just … peace. 

The familiar, clean smell of him through the johnny—his warmth, his weight—is balm to her jangled nerves. As memory juxtaposes with reality, a soft sob of reunion overcomes her. Her fingers scrunch up tents of the johnny. 

She continues, "Can you tell me why you're nervous?" 

His chin presses against the top of her head. "I've … no idea." 

"Do you not want to do this?"

"I suppose it's necessary."

"But do you want to?" she prods. 

"No, but ... I will." He pulls back to offer her a tiny smile. "Of my own volition, I assure you."

"Do you not like small spaces?" 

When he looks away, she rakes her mind for memories, trying to figure out if this is a new development, but she can't remember a damned thing that might indicate …. No. No, she can think—speculate, worry—about this later. 

"Do you … want me to make it easier for you?" she offers. 

"You already are."

She debates the wiseness of continuing, but … why _not_ use this deplorable compulsion to do some good, too? If Lucifer is willing and wanting, that is. "I could tell you not to be afraid?"

He doesn't reply.

"But only if you want," she rushes to add. "If this isn't as bad as 'dying' or … or you're not comfortable with me jockeying with your—"

"No."

The word is tiny. A bald open-wound of a confession—that he'd rather be afraid than have his brain fucked with even a little—and her heart constricts. 

She reaches up, cupping his face, and strokes the ridge of his cheek with her thumb. "Okay, it was just a thought."

He doesn't pull away. His dark, tired eyes close. Like he hasn't had a kind touch the entire time he was gone. Or, maybe, she's just projecting. She has no idea anymore.

"I'm here," she offers, instead of compelling him. 

Quiet stretches. She rests her ear against his chest, listening as she strokes his lower spine. Reading the stupid sad-faces pain chart since that's what's in her line of sight. His grip on her gradually relaxes, becomes less about clutching for purchase on a ledge and more about closeness. She hadn't even realized how tense he was until the tension seeps out of him. Trepidatious was an understatement.

"I have," he says, "missed you."

She looks up at him. "I thought the balcony only happened a few days ago for you."

"It did." 

A knock shatters the moment. She skips backward a stride. "Mr. Morningstar, are you ready?" calls the nurse.

"Yes," Lucifer says, climbing onto the gurney. 

Chloe moves out of the way, watching as Jonathan takes a second blood pressure reading. 

"That's _much_ better," he says, putting up the gurney's railings. "I'm going to take you to the machine now, all right?" He glances at her. "Mrs. Morningstar, if you could just wait here?"

"Oh, I'm not—" she has a chance to say before she realizes … what does it even matter? "Is the MRI thing closer than fifty feet from here?" 

Jonathan gives her a funny look but gestures to the double doors at the end of the hall. "The machine is just through there, ma'am. Not to worry."

"Good luck!" she calls as she watches the nurse retreat with the gurney. And then they're gone.

* * *

She takes the break to check the police database for "Constantine, John" and several variations. No outstanding warrants. No parking tickets. Not even a moving violation. At least, not in California. Branching out to other states will require more diligence. 

She calls dispatch and tells them Constantine's particulars. A five-foot-ten-ish, thin, honey-blond, brown-eyed British guy with potentially fraudulent papers. Dispatch promises to disseminate the BOLO immediately. If John's in California, he's a marked man, at least. Too bad there's a whole damned world for him to hide in. 

She spends the next forty-five minutes pacing and thinking far too much. 

"Oh, it's this lovely little place on Sunset," Lucifer is babbling when the nurse finally wheels him back in. "Ask for Jacques. Tell him I recommended you his way. He'll have you fixed up in a jiff."

"Really?" Jonathan says as the gurney rolls to a stop. "I always wanted to try it, but—"

"No time like the present, my good man!" purrs Lucifer. " _Love_ me a smooth canvas."

"Thanks," says the nurse, beaming. "Thanks, I will!"

"Am I to assume you've finished having your wicked way with me, now, or shall I stay for more?"

"Yes, Mr. Morningstar. You're free to go."

"Or come?"

Jonathan is still laughing as he hands Lucifer his discharge papers and leaves. Lucifer skims the pages, eyes narrowing. 

"How did it go?" Chloe says.

"I've no bloody idea," Lucifer replies. "I was hoping this would tell me, but all it says is my doctor will follow up with me. I assume they mean Dr. Linda."

"I think so." She fights with the urge to reach for him. "But it was okay? You weren't … trepidatious, or …?"

He regards her warmly as he pushes back the blankets and climbs off the bed. "No, darling. I didn't much enjoy it, either, to be fair, but chatting with Jonathan was delightful."

She nods, helping him with the ties on the gown again, stopping at the last one above his waist. He can reach the rest by himself, and— "Listen, I was thinking while you were out. And pacing. But mostly thinking."

"Yes, Detective?"

"Do you have a suit maker who owes you a favor? Like … there's _no_ way I can afford to buy the suits you usually wear, but maybe we could barter for them or something? You seem to still play a good favor game."

"Deals with the Devil _never_ expire, Detective."

"Right. Well, do you have any IOUs we could cash in?"

Lucifer brightens. "Why, yes, Detective. I've _several_ excellent tailors who owe me."

"Let's do that, then," she says, her gaze ricocheting upward as he shucks the gown without warning her. Rustling sounds of shifting cloth ensue as she re-ponders the stain on the ceiling tile. "We'll stop for some essentials on the way—a razor, shaving cream, stuff like that. Oh, and a new coffeemaker."

He snorts. "One of these is not like the other."

"My tension headache from last night became a withdrawal headache, like, forty-seven stops in our morning ago."

"Detective, we passed approximately forty-seven Starbucks whilst driving here. You could have slaked your thirst."

"Yeah, well. You can't have caffeine before an MRI. And I didn't want to flaunt it when you look as wrecked as I am."

He steps into Dan's old nylon warmups and pulls them up. Not before giving her a glorious view of his ass when she accidentally glances downward. When he turns to face her, newly dressed, his eyes are vaguely wet. 

"I appreciate your consideration," he says softly. "Suit-and-essentials shopping sounds lovely." 

"Can you live with cheap stuff? For the essentials?"

"Detective, as I have said, my tastes do tend toward the opulent, yes, but that doesn't mean I can't adjust. I've lived most of my life in Hell, after all, and I'd"—he looks away, rubbing his eyes—"I'd be glad. Genuinely grateful, really. For my own things. Whatever their price tag or lack thereof. I'd …." His voice sounds thicker than it should be. "Thank you."

She turns, giving him a moment to find his composure, a little angry at herself. She should have realized how humanizing—angelizing?—this offer would feel for him. He really has _nothing_ right now. Nothing but what she permits him to have. And that's … well, she can't even fathom how that feels. 

"I think this'll be good," she muses. "For both of us. And then we'll be ready for work tomorrow."

"Yes," he says, briefly gruff before he clears his throat. He reaches for the doorknob, gesturing her through. "Shall we?" 

She grins. "I guess you were right."

"Of course I was," he crows as he falls into step with her. "About what?"

"This day is better." 

"Oh, yes. Much. Despite the bloody horrific crick in my neck and the fact that I keep finding pieces of your tree in my hair."

She laughs as they dodge through the tiny forest of chairs in the waiting room and head into the quiet hallway. Warm tones and nondescript paintings decorate the space, serving as a polar opposite for the immaculate hospital white they'd just left. They amble toward the exit at the far end. 

"So … one thing I don't get," she admits.

"Yes?"

"A smooth canvas? What was _that_ about?" 

His grin shifts into something lecherous. "A Brazilian, darling."

"A what?"

Lucifer's eyebrows raise. "He wanted help with his manscaping?"

"Oh." Her face heats. " _Ohhh_." 

"You needn't worry," he adds flippantly as he opens the exterior door for her. "Love me a rough canvas, as well." 


	10. "Chanel Stylo Yeux Waterproof in Noir Intense"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely feedback—it totally makes my day :)

The unassuming boutique Lucifer directs them to in Beverly Hills is overflowing with suits from Italian brands—Prada, Armani, Versace, Valentino, etc.—with just a few splashes from other European names like Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and Dior. Racks and racks line the walls, and the cramped space smells like fresh pine. Chloe stands by the cash register while Lucifer exchanges affable greetings with the shop owner, a silvering, hawkish, beanpole of a man named Alessandro. The man leans in, his lips pursed as though he means to extend the greeting into the gregarious kiss-kiss maneuver so typical of Italians, but Lucifer bristles and backs away, his face the sharp, cut edge of a glacier.

" _Mi scusi, mi scusi, signore_." Alessandro holds up his hands. "I am sorry." 

The corner of Lucifer's mouth twitches like he might growl. 

"Ehm. Well." Alessandro clears his throat, adding nervously, "Who is your lovely companion?" 

"Oh, this is my," Lucifer begins enthusiastically, reanimating, only to trail away. "This is my …." With an uncharacteristic frown, he peers over his shoulder at her, eventually deciding, "This is the Detective."

Alessandro brightens. " _The_ Detective? Mr. Morningstar's _the_ Detective has graced my humble storefront? _Che bello!_ "

"Oh," Chloe stammers, "I don't know about—" 

"Nonsense, nonsense, this is a momentous occasion!" Alessandro assures her with a laugh. "You are Mr. Morningstar's Detective! I have heard endless tales of your valor, ingenuity, intelligence, and beauty. I feel as though I know you." 

"But—" She blinks. "Wait, you have?" Another blink. "You do?"

"Of course, _signora_! Of course!" He gathers his fingers to his lips and blows her an expanding kiss. Which is when she realizes his bright brown eyes are watering. Like he's met some kind of A-lister, and he's about to have a death-by-twitterpation event. "I would _love_ to tailor a dress or suit for you someday, if you'll permit!" 

She glances at Lucifer, who shrugs as if to say, _I talk about you. Deal with it._

"I," she says, "sure?" 

"Excellent!" gushes Alessandro. "Excellent!" 

"But, um, we came for Lu—" 

"Yes, yes, I meant in good time, of course." Alessandro almost seems to bounce with glee before he grabs her shoulders with his spindly, arching fingers. "Come, my dear." He marches her to a high-backed armchair by an alcove of mirrors. "Have a seat. You will spectate, yes?" 

"I … guess so?" She sinks so far into the velvet cushion she's convinced she'll fall in. 

"Would you enjoy some Prosecco?" Alessandro asks. One of his perfectly sculpted silver eyebrows creeps toward his ample hairline. "Or a glass of sparkling water?"

"Oh, I'm …." She laughs, bewildered. "I'm fine."

"Of course, of course," Alessandro says, grinning. "If you insist. But do tell me if you change your mind, my dear." He turns to Lucifer. "Mr. Morningstar, will you now permit me to take your measurements?" 

"Please," says Lucifer. 

"Excellent. _Perfetto_. _Divino_." Alessandro claps his hands together, full of drama and flair. His silver mane swishes away from his eyes. "Let us proceed."

With that, he guides Lucifer around a curtain, careful to keep a good bubble of space between them. Chatter in what sounds like Italian ensues, Alessandro's deep "in a world where" narrator tone contrasting with Lucifer's more dulcet, sensuous purring. The rat-a-tat-tat gunfire of syllables shoots by her ears far too fast to understand. When Alessandro reappears minutes later, a measuring tape dragging behind him like guts spilled from his pocket, he beams at her and plucks about ten different suits off the various racks. 

" _Mi scusi, signora_ ," he says, giving her a bow and a wink before disappearing behind the curtain again.

More chatter. She drowns herself in some silly phone game Trixie downloaded. Eventually, a metallic rasp draws Chloe's attention, and she looks up to see Alessandro stepping away from the fitting-area curtain with a somber expression. Silence hangs like a Prada-shaped coat.

"What's going on?" she says.

"Not to worry," Alessandro replies, his former enthusiasm gone behind a too sharp—forced—smile. "He merely needs a moment, and then we will resume."

She frowns. 

"I shall be at the register, then," he says, his tone shifting from a soothing rumble into something hopeful as he adds, "Unless you might consent to having your measurements taken now?" 

"Maybe another time," she says, and he nods, directing a pointed succession of concerned looks toward the fitting area as he trots away.

"Lucifer?" she calls, struggling out of the clutches of the too plush chair.

He doesn't answer.

"Can I—do you want me to come back there?" she prods, approaching.

"If you like, Detective," he replies.

She pushes aside the curtain. Lucifer stands in front of the mirror, donning a heather-gray suit that brings out his winter coloring. The suit is too wide in the chest, waist, thighs, hips—too long at the wrists and ankles. Tiny pins and pieces of tape gather up the fabric in the loose spots, marking where the tailor needs to fit the garment to Lucifer's svelte frame. But even with the pins stuck in place, his dramatic transformation manifests in the way he carries his shoulders. In the leonine stretch of his spine. He'd found his pride again, and it makes her smile before she notes his distant expression. 

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asks, coming up beside him as he traces his reflection in the mirror with his thumb.

"I've no idea," he says, sounding foggy. "My chest feels tight. It's quite peculiar."

He blinks his sleepy, midnight eyes, like he's floating somewhere outside his body, far away. He jams his fist against his heart, fingers clenching. 

"Lucifer? Did you remember something?"

"Hmm?" 

"Where are you, right now?"

"Oh. Here, I suppose." A distant smile stretches across his sharp features. His fist unclenches, and he pets the lapel of the suit jacket, his hand rasping against the luxurious fabric. "Love me a nice Burberry." 

"You do look much more … you."

"I feel it, as well," he admits. 

"Do you?"

He takes a wet breath, and some of his eerie distance fades. Warmth returns to his gaze as he regards her. "I might take this one home immediately, even though it doesn't fit quite right. I'm not certain I can tolerate another day in Daniel's castoffs."

"Sounds good to me. Are you okay?"

"I simply feel … tight … is all." 

"In your chest, still?"

"Like Pavarotti sat on me without asking first, yes."

"Maybe we should get out of here, then." She gestures at the massive rainbow waiting on hooks for him to try on. "Does Alessandro have what he needs to tailor these other suits?" 

"Yes, technically, though me trying them on for him will always be more precise than him working off a tape measure."

"What would you like to do?" she asks gently.

His gaze creases as he peers in the mirror, and then at the waiting garments. "I … I'm not enjoying this experience quite as much as I assumed I would."

"We'll leave, then. No problem. Let's go settle up. Does Alessandro deliver?"

"Oh, yes, Detective." Lucifer leers. "Alessandro does just about _anything_ if you ask him nicely."

She rolls her eyes, and he laughs.

"Your epic facial expressions of disapproval are definitely something I've missed," he says, rubbing his chest. "And it appears Pavarotti has left. Thank you."

"You're welcome," she replies warmly, inching closer without touching. "Now, let's jet before he comes back."

* * *

The car rumbles as they inch through the tail end of lunch hour traffic. Sunlight cleaves through the sunroof, giving Lucifer a bit of a golden halo. Which only makes her blink. And then laugh softly. She's sitting in a vehicle with a literal angel. She doesn't think she'll ever get used to the idea, no matter how many times she's hit with the irrefutable evidence. 

Her cellphone cupped to his ear, Lucifer gives her a perplexed look. She blushes, mouthing, "Sorry," at him. 

The luxurious fabric of his heather-gray suit gleams. Alessandro had been kind enough to donate a pair of his own sample shoes—normally intended as a placeholder for fittings—when he'd seen Lucifer planned to walk out of the store in a $10,000 garment and flip-flops. The shoes aren't Lucifer's normal red-soled, flashy Louboutins of choice, but they're far better than Dan's battered old Adidas. 

The distant cadence of a voice trickles through the tiny phone speaker, and Lucifer snaps to attention. "Yes, hello, Ms. Pentaghast, it's—" 

Lucifer smiles at the gleeful girlish squeal that floods the line, followed by an audible-but-tinny _Lucifer!?_

"Hello, my dear." 

An equally squealing, _Oh, my God! Oh, my God!_ follows.

He snorts. "An oxymoron, as you know"—Ms. Pentaghast laughs like he just made the funniest joke—"but I'll allow it this once." 

_Where are you? Do they have phones in Hell?_

"Not ones that work, I assure you. My absence was less protracted than I'd planned—I'm in Los Angeles again. I've no idea for how long." 

Ms. Pentaghast settles into indistinct babble. Lucifer nods along with whatever she's saying. "And how do you fare?"

More babbling floods the line. 

"Oh? Congratulations, darling! I knew you had it in you. When is your graduation?" 

More babbling. 

"I shall, of course, endeavor to be there if I'm still on Earth." 

If. If he's still on Earth. Chloe's heart twinges, though she grits her teeth, twisting her fingers around the steering wheel in an effort to stay silent. The squeak, squeak, squeak of her grip on the leather seems to catch his attention, and he peers across the parking brake at her. She stays her hands, shrugging her shoulders and rolling her neck as she diverts her focus to the road. 

"Listen, darling," Lucifer continues, not at Chloe, though she can feel his burning stare peeling off layers, "I'm trying to reach your fath—" He slumps, his attention drawn away again. "Ah. And I don't suppose there's any chance of—" More chatter. His slump gains a dejected air. "Ah. And when will he—" Cut off again, Lucifer rests his elbow against the window. "Yes, yes, all right. I suppose it's to be expected." More gabbing. "I'm most appreciative. Thank you. Lovely to chat." With a glum look, he hangs up Chloe's phone and deposits it into the cupholder.

"I take it no luck," Chloe says, frowning.

"It would seem Simon has taken my generous stipend and gone on holiday."

"What about emergencies?"

"Yes, well." Lucifer shrugs. "Simon quite reasonably assumed I wouldn't return in his lifetime. And since I'm literally his only client—"

"His _only_ client?" she asks.

"I've quite a lot of assets, Detective. It pays to have been investing since the idea of currency was all but a glimmer in humanity's eye."

"Just … you have no money you can touch right now."

He shakes his head. "Priscilla—"

"Priscilla?"

"Simon's daughter, yes. She did promise to try to reach him, but he's gone on a pony trek in Iceland or some such nonsense. He intentionally left his cellphone and laptop behind. He wanted to disconnect."

She squints. "A _pony_ trek?"

"Yes, I don't bloody know. Apparently people find it enjoyable? And given that he's sight-seeing glaciers, even if she can contact him, I doubt he'll have access to any of his work product."

"So, we're stuck."

"For now." He grinds his teeth. "Apologies, Detective."

"Lucifer, you couldn't have known this would happen. I mean, this whole situation is spiffy. You don't need to apologize."

"Spiffy, Detective?"

"Look, I'm running out of antonyms for craptastic, okay?" she retorts.

He looses a soft laugh. "I don't believe you've used splendiferous yet."

She gives him a look.

"Perhaps marvelous? Prodigious? Sublime?"

She rolls her eyes dramatically for him, and he laughs again as she turns into the parking lot, chasing a little Prius through the traffic light. At midday on a Monday, the lot isn't too full. She pulls into a spot a few cars away from the sliding entry doors.

"What is …?" he says, frowning as he peers at their surroundings.

"Walmart." She yanks her key from the ignition.

At his blank expression, she can't help but snicker. "Oh, come on, you don't know what—" Her jaw clacks shut when the whirring closing sunroof shifts how the light hits his gleaming suit. His _gleaming_ suit. His would-be custom-tailored Burberry that costs more than some cars. "Of course you don't," she finishes, muttering under her breath. 

"I can bloody well hear that, you know."

"I know; I know. Sorry." She pops her seatbelt loose with a click and turns to him, gesturing through the window at their destination. "Lucifer Morningstar, welcome to the ninety-nine percent. I present to you: bargain shopping."

The bafflement marring his features would crack her up at any other moment. Today, she only finds a giant, tangled clot of apprehension and dread. He'd _said_ he wouldn't mind cheap stuff. But his idea of cheap and hers might be different. 

"Come on," she says, pushing open the car door. "If you want to, I mean."

* * *

The entrance spills them into the grocery area. The air is cool and smells faintly of fresh produce as they wander past a shelf covered in spiky pineapples. She heads left at the fork in the walkway, the wheels on their shopping cart squealing in protest at the change in direction. They pass a long line of cash registers, many empty, many manned by dour-faced cashiers. Lucifer regards the various shoppers with a dubious expression, his attention lingering on a grungy blonde UCLA student standing by one of the conveyor belts, her hair a ratty tangle. She sports flannel boxers, Uggs, and a stained sweatshirt proclaiming her university. A pile of ramen noodles stuffs her basket to the brim. 

"Why is the floor so _sticky_?" he says, grimacing as the soles of his new shoes squick-squick-squack against the shining tile floors.

"Do you really wanna know?" Chloe asks.

He doesn't reply except to say, "They probably funded these 'falling prices' by cutting back on janitorial staff." He puts the words falling prices into air quotes.

When they find the toiletries, she gestures at the first aisle, which is full of shaving supplies, toothbrushes, and other miscellaneous items. "So, what do you need?" 

With a determined look, he strides down the aisle, examining everything label by label like he's been tasked with disarming a nuclear bomb. She's pleasantly surprised when he doesn't argue—not even a little—instead readily shoveling various things into the cart. Dental floss. Toothpaste. Mouthwash. A set of disposable razors. Shaving cream. Deodorant. Moisturizer. Hand sanitizer. When they hit the makeup section, he swoops toward Cover Girl and palms some black liquid line—

She stays his hand, their fingers brushing lightly before he can dump the makeup into their cart. 

He relinquishes the bottle of eyeliner with a regretful, hitching motion. "I suppose this isn't precisely essential, is it?" he says with a self-deprecating laugh.

"No, no. It's not that. It's just … um." How to put this delicately. "Have you even _used_ Cover Girl before?"

"Goodness, no." 

"You're used to the really nice stuff, yeah?" 

"Chanel Stylo Yeux Waterproof in Noir Intense." 

O … kay, then. So, he doesn't just use the "really nice stuff." He uses the makeup equivalent of a Ferrari. Because, of course, he does. That'll hurt to buy, but … she will if it will help him feel more human—angel? Whatever. "I think quality matters for this. If you're a Chanel Guy, I doubt the Cover Girl stuff will fly. It'll probably only frustrate you."

"Why, Detective Decker. A makeup aficionado as well?" He splays his palm dramatically against his chest. "Be still, my heart, I'd no idea."

"I lovemakeup. I just don't see much practicality in wearing a lot to work."

"You are quite practical," he agrees, stepping close to her. "And yet you created a lovely smoky eye for our masquerade ball, so I suppose I should have known not to stuff you in a one-adjective-fits-all box."

"You thought my smoky eye was lovely?"

"I always think you're lovely," he murmurs.

Heart pounding, she stuffs her fists into her pockets. Otherwise she'd risk taking hold of his newly sleek, shiny lapel, and dragging him even closer. She wants to run her hands up his— "I don't suppose anybody owes you a favor at Sephora?" she blurts.

"Oh, Sephora doesn't sell Chanel in the United States."

"Where do you get it, then? Anywhere you can cash in an IOU? I'll buy the Chanel if I have to, though."

"For science, I'm certain, yes?" he snarks, running his gently arched fingers suggestively along the buttons of his waistcoat. Exactly like _she_ wanted to do, damn it.

"Not really even a little," she admits.

He laughs again, the sound of his satisfaction unfurling like a sprawling superbloom. "You like me with a highlighted waterline, I take it?"

"I like you when you're _happy_ , Lucifer."

"And?" he prods, a purr that slides down her spine.

"And," she says, "and most other times, too."

His tongue runs along the edge of his upper lip. " _And,_ Detective?" 

"And-I-like-you-with-a-highlighted-waterline."

A fire stokes itself in her belly when he laughs again. Her body tingles. She jams her hands into her pockets as far as they'll go, until her knuckles are rubbing painfully against the inside seams.

"The manager at Neiman Marcus—lovely chap, ever so fit—owes me quite a lot," he says.

"Oh, thank Satan," she gushes, blowing out a breath. "That'll work for even more than the Chanel. Which one? We can go there next." 

"The one in Beverly Hills." He cocks his head at her, a mystified grin on his face. "Even more than the Chanel? Darling, what _did_ you have in mind?"

"It's just, I really wasn't sure how I was gonna convince you to even _look_ at the clothing section here. It's … um." She directs a toothy wince toward the center of the store, where the t-shirt racks begin.

"Quintessential 'bargain shopping?'" he says, putting the words in graceful air quotes.

"At its finest." She echoes his gesture as she continues, "Really, _really_ not your 'jam,' I'm guessing." 

"Most certainly not. Though I assure you, I can adapt, if need be."

"You haven't seen the clothes over there."

"A challenge, is it?" 

"No," she says softly, a smile tugging at her lips. "I don't want to stifle your ensemble when there's no reason to. Thanks for being a good sport about the toiletries, though." 

"I told you, I'd make do."

"I know you did. I just … it's just …."

"Hard to picture me slumming it, so to speak?"

"Lucifer, it's just so not you! The sweats and warmups made you look like a grumpy John Stockton or something." 

He makes a face. "Who?" 

"A famous basketball player."

"Ah."

She types the address for Neiman Marcus into her phone. With traffic, it'll take a while, and the length of Trixie's remaining school day is rapidly dwindling. 

"Detective … when _don't_ you like me?"

She looks up from her phone. "What?"

"You said it earlier. That you like me when I'm happy. And you like me most other times. Implying there are times when you don't. When don't you?" 

She laughs nervously. "Lucifer, I didn't exactly mean it like _that_."

"How did you mean it, then?"

"I …." Shit. "I'm thinking it's not important right now."

"Isn't it?"

She grabs a generic bottle of makeup remover and throws it into the cart to distract herself.

"Chloe," he says, her name a soft prayer on his lips, "I didn't leave to leave _you_. I didn't leave to curtail"—he gestures vaguely between them—"this. Us. I didn't."

"I know," she says. 

"Then what have I done to earn your ire?"

"I just …." Her eyes prick as her good mood wavers. "I just wish we could be a team. A _real_ one. And we're not." 

"Detective," he says with a baffled-sounding chuckle, "being your partner is one of my favorite things on this Earth. Of course we're a team. This bloody compulsion won't change that."

He just … doesn't get it. Of course he doesn't get it. Why would he? He didn't get it yesterday, either. "Lucifer, we have _never_ been a team."

His confusion only seems to burgeon. 

"Look, never mind," she says. 

He tenses, his hand flying to grip the corrugated shelving, which sends a cascade of makeup bottles tipping onto their sides like dominos. 

"I take that back!" she blurts, and he relaxes. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. "I meant, we should go, I think. Is there anything else you want while we're here?" 

His dark eyes are big and bright and hurting and _clueless_. "Detective?"

"Any more bathroom stuff?" she clarifies.

His lips form a grim line. "No."

"Then it's back to Beverly Hills, I guess." She pastes a brittle smile onto her face.

A tiny sigh gusts from his lips. "Very well." 

He doesn't sound at all like he thinks things are well. The opposite, more like. Which is true, but she's not prepared to rehash this fight right now. Not so soon. Definitely not in a Walmart aisle, at any rate. 

Yet … even then, he bumps her gently out of the way with his hip, wrapping his fingers around the metal grip, and pushes the squealing, protesting cart in the direction of the registers. "Shall we?"

He's just so … him.

Self-oriented, yet simultaneously somehow more considerate than anyone she's ever met. 

"Yeah," she says softly. "Thanks."

* * *

The swish and roar of traffic fills the quiet as they head back up the 405 toward Beverly Hills. He stares into space with a troubled expression as he worries idly at the lapel of his jacket. He starts near the collar, pinching the seam, and then strokes downward until he hits the first button. A new nervous habit, maybe? He'd always been hyperactive, but this seems more … more. More pensive. More compulsive. His teeth are gritted, and his shaking grip is clinging. Like … like he expects to discover any moment the suit is imaginary. That he isn't …. 

That he isn't safe.

"You're sure Lilith can't come here?" she asks.

"No," he says, the word grim and clipped.

"No, you're not sure?"

"No, she cannot come here. Not unless she hitches a ride with one of my siblings, and they wouldn't dare. _I_ didn't even bloody dare, when it still could have helped."

"… Helped?"

"Humans aren't designed to be immortal, let alone live in Hell. Her mind was ravaged by eons of brutal existence."

Okay, that's … awful. "What about demons?"

"What about them?"

"Couldn't she send a demon after you via possession?" she asks.

His fidgeting worsens, amplifying. He shifts his palms to his thighs, stroking up and down from knee to hip. With him trapped by her side, he's uniquely vulnerable right now. Maybe they shouldn't have sent Maze away. 

Or, maybe, Chloe's being a worrywart, given that a possessed human hasn't already gate crashed. More time passes in Hell than on Earth. Thousands of people die every day. By now, Lilith will have had plenty of opportunities to send someone after him. 

Maybe the important question is … whyhasn't she?

"I don't see how she could take me back," Lucifer says, as if he's followed Chloe's train of thought.

"What do you mean?"

"She could send someone to kill me, yes. But if she means to repossess me, utilizing a demon won't accomplish anything. They can't cross dimensions with their borrowed shells."

"But what if she means to kill _me_?" Chloe says. "I wonder what happens to the compulsion if _I_ die."

His breaths shift to tiny gasps. He clutches his thighs, raking his fingers down his new threads like he means to shred them. So much for keeping his stress levels low.

"I'm sorry," she rushes to say. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have brought this up."

"Detective." The word is soft. Pleading.

"I'll be vigilant," she assures him. "Like I always am. I promise." Maybe she'll ask a uni to keep an extra eye on her apartment. She checks the rearview mirror, noting the cars behind her. "She won't get you if I have anything to do with it."

The fact he doesn't joke he was more worried about _her_ hits like a dissonant cymbal crash. He really is … damaged. Deeply. For a brief, awful moment, Chloe wishes Lilith wasn't squirreled away out of reach—she'd take Maze-like pleasure in hunting her down and seeing justice served.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

They need a subject change. Stage right. Her brain tumbles over options.

"What do they owe you for?" she asks.

His hands still. "Hmm?"

"Alessandro. And this manager guy we're gonna meet at Neiman Marcus. What do they owe you for?" His fingers tighten, leaving small wrinkles in the sleek fabric by his knee. His intensity impels her to add, "Just curious, really. You don't have to answer."

He looks away. "I helped Alessandro meet his husband."

"So, the Devil played matchmaker?"

"More like they bumped into each other at my orgy." 

She grins, braking as an SUV angles into the gap between her car and the next. "Why am I not surprised?"

His eyebrows knit as he turns back to her. Like … that's not the response he expected. Not at all. The wheels turn behind his eyes, cranking on some complex equation.

"And the manager?" she asks. "What does he owe you for?"

"I let him borrow my chalet in Aspen." 

Now, that, she can't picture. "You … ski?"

"No, but I quite like the view in winter."

She smiles. "You and your views."

"I appreciate many aesthetics. Any aesthetic that isn't Hell, really." 

"What _does_ Hell look like? Is it anything like we imagine?" 

He shudders. "Detective … I … I understand I've offended you in some way, but—"

"I was just trying to make conversation that doesn't suck."

"Well, I'd prefer not to _converse_ about my prison."

She wants to fucking kick herself. "Lucifer, I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to dredge more stuff up." And then she catches up with the rest of what he'd said. His assumption she's poking at wounds because she _knows_ her questions will hurt. Because she's offended. "I wasn't punishing you for anything, I just …." Her heart twists. "I really like to talk with you. Ever since you showed up again, all I've wanted to do is talk with you." She wipes her face with the ridges of her palms. "We used to have a great rapport."

"You desire rapport with me."

She glances at him, at the sudden stiffness in his frame. "That's _not_ a demand, Lucifer."

His relieved little sigh makes her ache. He slumps against the door, pressing his face into his hands as he takes long dragging inhalations, like he's trying to settle himself. 

She wants to scream, but settles for echoing his sigh with one of her own, offering a soft, sick-at-heart, "Sorry," into the void between them. 

He doesn't reply.

A semi merges in front of her. She brakes, cursing softly. 

"He won't damn it."

"What?"

"God won't damn that truck," says Lucifer blithely. "He's quite hands off with human nitty gritty."

"It was a figure of speech," she bites out.

"Of course." A pause. "Detective?"

" _What_?" she snaps.

"Will you … tell me what I've missed since I've been gone?" he says, suddenly wistful. Intent. "Your life. Everything. Please. That's conversation I would enjoy."

Her heart squeezes at the slow simmer of longing in his tone. "I said we don't have to talk."

"Yes, I know." The seat squeaks as his body shifts, toward her, until his shoulder juts in the dashboard's direction. "But … I desire it as well. The return of our"—he gestures at the space between them—"rapport."

A lump forms in her throat. "Yeah?"

He offers her a regal nod in reply. 

"Well," she begins, "Trixie placed into a gifted math class."

"Has she?" he says, smiling. "I can't say I'm surprised."

"And Dan is … better."

He snorts. "That, I would not have guessed."

"He's been in therapy. Linda referred him to a grief counselor. They hit it off. He's doing really good now—you just freaked him out a little."

The motor grumbles indignantly as she brakes yet again to let a Porsche in front of her. "God, damn it," she mutters.

"You wouldn't have this problem if you tailgated more often." 

"Yeah, well, there's something to be said for having space to brake if shit goes wrong."

He expels a breath—rubs the bridge of his nose like she's trying his patience—but says nothing else of their recurring highway plight, instead choosing to prod, "And you, Detective? What have you been up to?"

"Just work, really."

"Tell me of your cases, then."

"Well, there was one guy with a pitchfork. You'd have had some fun with him." For the Devilish puns and scathing commentary, if nothing else.

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah." Her eyes water. "I missed you _so_ much on that one. I kept imagining you were there. Saying things."

His eyes glint. "Did you, now?" 

"Yeah."

"And what _things_ did you imagine me saying?" he asks too gleefully.

Her face heats.

"I see," he says. "And did this man murder with the pitchfork, or did he try to stop you with it like our previous axe-wielder?"

"Both."

"Dearie me. But you stuck a pitchfork in him, so to speak?"

She laughs. There's the pun. "Yeah. He's done."

" _Well_ done."

And another. The lump burgeons in her throat. She's missed this. Missed having him here, nosing into the gaps in her life like the merciless tailgater he is. 

"I've really missed you," she repeats softly. 

"Well, I'm here now," he says, his expression warm. "Perhaps we'll have fun tomorrow at work?"

"God, I hope so. We could _both_ use it."

"That we could, Detective. Tell me more?"

She does, noting the cars behind them again.

* * *

"What scents do you like, Detective?" 

"Like … in general?"

"On me."

He's never asked her that before. He's never asked her _anything_ when it comes to her honest opinions about his appearance. "Uh …."

"Oh, come now, surely you have a preference?"

"But this is about what _you_ want."

He leans in to sniff the rim of a cologne bottle. His nose wrinkles when he gets a whiff, and he screws the cap back on before returning it to the shelf. He grabs the next bottle down the line, some luxury brand she doesn't recognize. "Humor me," he says. "Unless you've not been paying attention?"

"Believe me, I have," she says, only realizing what she's said when a knowing, triumphant grin stretches across his face. "Okay, that was underhanded, even for you."

His smile only widens. "Tell me."

"Why is it so important?"

"Because I like to know what you like."

"Not because of"—she gestures between them—"because of this, right?"

"If by _this_ , you mean the fact that I find you interesting and always have, why, yes. Yes, it is. If by _this_ , you mean the fact that I'm metaphysically shackled to you, then, no. That didn't factor in."

His almost purring tone makes her smile bashfully back at him. "Well … let me think." She closes her eyes, trying to remember. He had a few scents he rotated between. She liked them all, but one had always made her flare her nostrils and breathe deep whenever he'd enter her space. He'd worn it on the beach. He'd worn it after. _Foolish condiment_ , he'd rumbled. He'd worn it the night they'd found Charlotte's body, too. The press of it against the back of her throat had comfort—

"Detective?"

"It was kinda floral?" she hazards, imagining. "But woodsy, too. Maybe some vanilla?"

"Ah, yes." He turns to the assistant standing behind the counter. "Would you be so kind as to bring me a sample of the Clive Christian No. 1?"

The blushing woman is quick to oblige, pulling out a gold bottle with a shiny gold cap that looks like a crown. She sprays some onto a cotton ball for them.

"Try this," he says, pushing the cotton across the glass. 

She leans into his space to take a whiff. The scent hits. First, the floral notes, and then the woodsy stuff—cedar? sandalwood?—blooms in her nose, and she can't stop herself from deepening her inhalation. 

"That's the one, then," he confirms. "I'll take this and the Eau d'Hadrien, please." 

"What's _your_ favorite scent?" she asks.

"I've never known you to wear perfume, Detective."

"No, I just mean in general."

"Curious, are we?"

"Like I said, it's nice to just talk. I like to talk with you. You interest me, too." She tugs at her shirt collar, sudden warmth blasting her skin. "Sorry, this probably isn't—"

"Jasmine," he says. "I like jasmine. And cinnamon. And citrus. And that conditioner you like."

She blinks. "It's just Herbal Essence. Nothing special."

"You use it," he replies. As if to say, that _makes_ it special. 

* * *

They head to the clothing section last to grab him some socks and other things. "What about these?" she says, tossing a three-pack of black boxer-briefs at him as she scans their surroundings again. 

He catches the plastic bag with a flicker of movement that hardly registers, arching an imperious eyebrow at her. "You think I consider underwear _essential_?"

"Um." Her face burns as she recalls him standing on the steps to his bedroom in a button down, bare-assed as he called boisterously to Eve. "No. No, I know you don't, but—"

"Wearing boxer-briefs _ruins_ the lines of a good suit, Detective."

"Lucifer, I don't give a crap if you go commando; I'm more concerned about what you sleep in."

He smirks. "Oh, are you?"

"Which I'm guessing is usually nothing, yeah?" she says, plowing onward.

"… Usually," he admits. "And what I wear to bed, when I wear it, is not"—he raises the bag to his face, scowling at the contents—"one-hundred-percent cotton." He scoffs. "Really, Detective. This is—"

"You get you're living in an apartment with an eleven-year-old girl right now, right?"

"You humans are so bloody _prudish_." 

She folds her arms.

"Very well," he concedes, "but not these." He stuffs the bag of boxer-briefs back onto the rack, the plastic crinkling in his effort to smash the thing into an invisible ball. "Boxer-briefs are so"—he makes an "ugh" sound deep in his throat—"unnecessarily constricting. I'm more of a free baller."

She coughs.

He prowls the aisles, staring at wash labels, rubbing various fabrics between his thumb and index finger before picking out a few pairs of silk boxers, a set of black silk pajamas, and a black silk lounge robe. 

"Silk, much?" she says, eyeballing the pile.

"Well, it's the opposite of grit and grime, yes?"

Heart aching, she tucks the implications of that away for safe keeping, along with all the other tidbits he's given her over the years. 

* * *

Overall, the day is idyllic. They chat. About little things. Big things. Everything in between. They catch up. Like the oldest of friends. She tells him most things. He tells her some things—each one momentous in its own way. Their "rapport" feels almost like it used to be. Almost. Were it not for the occasional "oops" that leaves him gasping until she can figure out how to fix it. 

Once Lucifer has his essentials, and they pick up Trixie from school, the day is nearly exhausted. The sun paints the clouds in the western edges of the sky with resplendent reds and pinks and oranges. 

"I feel as though I've missed this, as well," Lucifer says, taking a deep breath as the cool air billows through the slitted-open car windows. 

“Wanna go to the beach?" Chloe asks on a lark, glancing at her watch. "Get a bigger whiff?" They have time to overshoot her apartment and make it to the shore before the sun hits the water. But only barely. "Could be nice."

"Yes!" chirps Trixie from the back seat. "Yes, please. Can we? Can we, please? We haven't been to the beach in, like, for _ever_."

"Isn't it too bloody cold for the beach?" Lucifer mutters.

Chloe laughs. "Well, we won't go in. We'll just walk for a bit. Or sit."

"And talk?" 

"Yeah, I'd like that, if you would."

"Please, can we?" Trixie chants. "Please, please, please?"

His focus breaks only enough to glance at the rearview mirror, into the backseat—though his expression harbors no irritation—before returning to Chloe. 

"You pick," she assures him. 

He leans toward the window, nostrils flaring as he inhales once more. His eyes drift closed, like the scent relaxes him, and she feels compelled to add "salt air" to the list of favorite scents he mentioned earlier. 

"Yes," he decides. "Please. I'd … quite like to see water again."

The wistfulness in his tone is back.

She shifts the car into the center lane instead of turning left at the light. "Okay, then. Beach, it is." 

Much to Trixie's exuberant delight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>    
>  [Art by Aelwen](https://aelwen-art.tumblr.com/)   
> 


	11. "a brain after all"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early gift today since I'm still awake on the date change :D Thank you so much, everyone, for all the comments and encouragement!

"Lucifer, why do you like the smell of salt?"

His eyes drift open to a bright blue infinity. The waves froth and foam, tickling the soles of his feet when the water reaches the apex of its encroachment onto the sand. He scrunches his toes as the latest wave withdraws back into the depths. Beside him, she lies on a faded beach towel, her beautiful body concealed only by an evergreen-colored bikini. 

He rolls onto his side, propping his head on his elbow. "Well, it's … it's symbolic, I suppose." He grins. "By the way, I quite like this color on you."

"It's symbolic," she echoes. 

She rests a palm against his ribcage, stroking him with her thumb. The heat of her touch coils through his skin, and he twitches, half-laughing. 

"Are you ticklish?" she asks.

"Only for you, darling."

She bites her lip coyly. "What do you mean by symbolic?"

He strokes her mouth, leaving a faint streak of wet sand behind. Her nose wrinkles adorably before he can brush the silica away. She cups her palm over his, peering up at him. He kisses her. Quick. Just a peck for connection before he shifts his attention to a distant point beyond their toes—the horizon where ocean and sinking sun meet sky. 

Sandpipers trot along the edges of wet, glistening sand. Seagulls cackle over head. The waves are a white noise roar that comforts him. But the smell …. He inhales deeply of the not-ash, the memory of pain—of rebirth—seeping into him like the encroaching tide. 

"Detective, this is where I arrived," he says, returning his gaze to her. "This is where I first had Maze cut off my wings. Smelling salt means I've escaped."

"From Hell."

"From _everything_."

With eyes like soul traps, she searches his face. He can't look away. Doesn't want to.

"So, for you, it means freedom," she asserts, cupping his cheek before plunging her fingers into his hair. "Do you feel free now?"

"Yes—oh!" 

He laughs, the breath rushing out of him as she scoots closer. Kicks her leg over his hip. Straddles him, trapping his wrists by his sides. He flops down, his back pressed onto the damp towel beneath him. She splays her palms gently against his pectorals.

He's pinned.

Constricted.

If she were anyone else, he'd buck out from under or tear himself to pieces trying, but … she isn't anyone else. The only tightness he experiences is in his groin, not his chest. The only frustration, that he isn't given leave to touch. 

"Is this okay?" she whispers, looking worriedly down at him.

"Only for you, darling."

"Do you _like_ it?" she amends.

"Oh, yes," he says, the words thick and heady—needing. "Have me anytime you like."

"But what about when _you_ like?"

"With you, darling, that's always."

"Even like this? With me on top?" 

"Particularly like this." He smirks. "Save a horse, Detective."

Her responding mirth is brief as a big wave cracks against the beach, unfurling gelid tendrils that reach their toes. He glances left, where Beatrice had been making a multi-tiered sandcastle. But the castle is nothing more than an eroded blob with vague peaks that had been towers. And the child … where had the child gone?

"Lucifer … are we a team?" the Detective asks.

He frowns, his attention shifting back to her. "Of course we are."

She frowns, too.

"Aren't we?" he continues. "Why would we not be?"

She doesn't answer.

"Detective?"

With a sigh, she shakes her head. "It's not important."

He laughs. "I should say not. Really, Detective, you doubt my devotion when you're literally sitting on top of me? The _Devil_?"

"Well, this _is_ your fantasy. We're in _your_ head. I don't know if you're a reliable narrator right now."

"Darling, if we're in my head, I would think _you're_ the unreliable narrator."

"I guess, when you put it that way …." Warmth snakes into his skin as she presses her palms to his temples, holding him her willing captive. She dips down for a kiss. "I love you."

"And I you." Easy to say here. In this place.

In this infinity.

The gulls cry overhead as she straightens, the evergreen material of her swimsuit darkening in the waning sunlight. She grips her neck, then sweeps her hands down her cleavage to her navel, giving him a show. His body stirs, filling his mind with a vague, dizzying scream of more, more, _more_. He tries to move his wrists, to clutch her thighs—anything—but she clamps her knees against his hips like a vise.

"Bad Devil," she murmurs. "Audience participation is against the rules for this, remember?"

The euphoria of anticipation zings through him, manifesting in a chuckle he can't stop.

"Detec—" he begins on reflex, only to finish with a muffled, "mmph," as she cups a hand over his mouth, her fingernails digging crescents into his cheek.

"You want me to ride you?" she asks.

The burning coil of desire in his gut twists until he has no more slack. He offers a soft, desperate, "Please," against her palm like a prayer. 

"Then shut up." 

She waits a moment before lifting her hand away. He doesn't speak. Only stares, watching the pink tip of her tongue slide along her lower lip as she regards him like he's dessert. She shimmies down his legs, reaching between them. Her fingertips find his waistband. She hooks the edge of his swim trunks with her index finger. 

"I want to see you. All of you. Now."

With a little tug, she drags his shorts down, exposing his lower body to cool air. Another wave tickles his toes. The salt scent overwhelms him. His sky is her eyes, green as an algal bloom. Unabashed, she looks at him. At everything. For once, not scrambling to avert her gaze, even with his arousal burgeoning for anyone on the beach to see.

She cups him. "Mine."

 _Hers_ , he echoes, silent. 

And the world falls away like a—

OPEN THE DOOR FOR HER. 

He snaps awake to conflagration, the blood in his veins replaced by fire, the thoughts in his head already ash. He arches backward, trying to escape the lash of the flaming whip, but it strikes true, snaking down his body to the tips of his peripheral nerves, focusing into a searing whorl of fervor in his groin. In his chest. He can't breathe. His skin doesn't fit, and he _needs_. To open. The door. 

"Lucifer?" 

An imagined echo of vile laughter—laughter at him while he's helpless and screaming—strokes his spine like cold fingers. He tumbles out of bed, his hip taking the brunt of the impact, but it's a single staccato note amid a massive orchestral swell. He imagines himself disengaging the lock. Salivating, he stumbles across the room, his focus singular. 

"Lucifer! Are you okay? Did you fall?" The doorknob jiggles.

OPEN THE DOOR FOR HER. 

For _Her_. 

OPEN IT, _NOW_. 

He slams against the frame with his heavy heaving body before he gets a shaking grasp on the doorknob. He flips open the lock.

As soon as the latch disengages, as soon as a sliver of the hallway beyond—a dark, lovely hint of her silhouette—appears in the gap between the doorframe and the door itself, the needing winks out like it never was. 

" _No_ ," he whines, his body swindled.

Cheated. Incomplete. 

The door eases shut as his lolling weight pushes it closed. 

A pause.

"Uh … Lucifer?"

He can't quite catch his breath. When did this even _happen?_ Distant laughter, again. Eyes, watching. The room bleeds away, replaced by darkness, by ash, by the sound of chittering, cackling crowds, crushing him like a garlic press. 

"Lucifer?"

He catches himself mid-flinch. " _What_ , damn it?"

The knob jiggles—OPEN THE DOOR FOR HER. "Are you okay?" 

Need explodes, but as soon as he removes the obstruction of his weight, the fire in his body douses again, hissing away in curl of smoke. No resolution. Only the whiplash of absence. 

Again.

With a broken, soft sob, he surrenders to gravity at last, his legs folding underneath him.

Sweat slicks him head to toe. Burning blush carpets his skin. His erection is thick against his belly. His balls ache like someone hung weights from them. His nipples are pert to the point of pain. 

Telltales of not-his desperation, shoehorned into him against his will.

"Lucifer …?" she repeats. The word is muffled. Hesitant.

He takes a rickety breath, injecting as much bravado as he can muster into, "Of course you can enter whenever you like, Detective, but given your current sensibilities, I wouldn't recommend it."

"Why?"

"Because I'm bloody starkers. That's why I locked the door in the first place—you lectured me about it, if you'll recall, to save your offspring from emotional scarring. Not to mention certain bits of my anatomy seem to have woken faster than my bloody brain did, which I gather isn't a picture _you've_ any interest in witnessing, either."

"Oh. Um. No. No, thanks."

"I thought not." _Hoped_ not, for once. He closes his eyes, leaning tiredly against the bookshelf by the door. A sudden lump fills his throat as his panting subsides. "Detective, I … I would appreciate it if you didn't knock. A verbal inquiry into my state of being will suffice."

"Shit," she says like she's sinking, "did I …?" 

"Yes." 

The twin shadows cast underneath the doorway by her feet shift across the hard wood. A thump makes the door rumble on its hinges, as though she's bowing her forehead against the surface. Another soft curse follows. And then, "Lucifer, I'm so sorry." 

_She_ never apologized. Or adjusted to avoid tormenting him. Instead, she wound him up on purpose, until …. Until? 

The more he scrutinizes the memory, the more it fleets into a blur, beyond his grasp, like a dream dematerializing in the light of day. He doesn't wish to chase the recollection anyway. 

He rubs his eyes. 

The tightness in his chest eases.

"Lucifer?" the Detective prods quietly. The remorse in her tone wraps around him like a blanket. "Are you o—" 

"It's quite all right," he assures her, relaxing into the warm safety of _her_. "No permanent harm done."

"I swear, I didn't mean to."

"Of course you didn't." 

"I just," she says, "I didn't even think." 

"I know." Her lack of malice, of guile, of premeditation, soothes like no other balm. "Really, Detective."

"Talk about a rude awakening, huh."

"Quite. Though, I suppose, at least, this assuages our previous concerns about whether you can boss me around whilst I'm unconscious. The answer is: you bloody well can." 

She doesn't laugh.

He could scream.

"Now, what is it you actually desired?" he asks.

"I only wanted to make sure you were awake. We have to leave for Linda's in about forty-five minutes if we're gonna make it before my shift starts."

"Ah. Well, mission accomplished. I'm up now." He scowls down at himself. "In more ways than one."

"Yeah, I … I …." 

"M _o_ m," yells a distant Beatrice, dragging out the o to make the word a sing-song plea. "When are you gonna start the pancakes?"

"Just a minute, Monkey," the Detective calls back. She clears her throat before adding hesitantly in his direction, "You did want to come"—yes, yes, _yes_ —"today, right? I can try to figure out how to give you some freedom in here if you'd rather I leave you behind." 

The memory of agonizing separation drives him to bark, "No," faster than he'd like.

"Lucifer … if you're not ready …."

"No, I … Detective, I wish to come." He tries to ignore the awful tightness in his groin, focusing instead on how he used to feel, working with her every day. He tilts his head against the bookcase, smiling faintly as his pounding heart calms a little. "I think perhaps I need to."

"You _need_ to?"

"Yes."

 _Are we a team?_ she'd asked.

The shadows of her feet at the threshold don't move. Until at last, she softly says, "Okay. Well, I'll be downstairs making breakfast, then. Feel free to join us _if you want,_ yeah?" 

"Of course."

Her footsteps recede down the hall, and then the stairs.

He exhales, one slow breath that empties him out, leaving him a wasted ruin. 

Fuck.

* * *

He can't bloody finish. 

_Let me help you,_ she murmurs against the nape of his neck, and he strokes, and soothes, and fondles himself using her guise—an imaginary reach-around under the hot, pelting water of the shower. But he can't push himself over the peak blocking him from dissolution, no matter how hard he shoves and strains and struggles. Again, and again. 

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ," he hisses, rutting against his palm until he's heaving with frustration and fatigue, and the formerly steaming water runs lukewarm. "Dad _damn_ it." 

Clenching his teeth, he gathers himself for another effort. A warm, phantom hand splays against his sternum. He tips his head back. And then she's there. The Detective. Naked. Smiling. Binding his wrists behind him with the silk tie of her suit. Touching him in all his erogenous places. 

_I love you,_ she says, and he wants her. _I choose you._

His favorite fantasy. 

And yet—

"Lucifer!" the Detective calls from the steps. "If you wanna go, we gotta _go_!" A pause. "But only if you want to, yeah?" 

"Just a minute!" he chokes out as he slumps against the wall, away from the spray, the cold tiles a chilling line along his side. 

Courtesy of his divine constitution, he's never had trouble before. 

Not once. 

Another basic bodily function that should be his alone, stolen from him as though it were a bar of gold kept in his safe. Like sleep. Like feeling. Like his _thoughts_. Worse, he isn't certain whether this predicament means he can't orgasm without the Detective's demand, or without her explicit participation. Or both. If this curse truly is some kind of forced master/slave bond, her participation being a requirement for his release wouldn't surprise him.

His chest aches at the thought. 

If this were a scene—edging he'd asked for, edging they'd agreed upon beforehand—he'd congratulate the Detective on a job bloody well done. He'd enjoy himself, even, knowing his reward would arrive eventually, when she deemed him worthy. But consent makes all the difference.

This isn't titillation. 

This is torment. 

Which ….

No. 

No, this is silly. One unsuccessful trial does not a theory make. His pleasure isn't owned by the Detective. He's stressed to a point near apoplexy. Of _course_ nothing is happening right now.

"Fuck," he rasps as he turns the temperature dial of the shower from scalding to polar vortex. "Bloody fucking hell." 

His erection wilts in the bitter chill, and his balls tuck into his body. His unmet need—stoked by hurricanes of arousal ripping him out by the roots for days—remains. 

"Lucifer," the real Detective calls up the steps, "are you coming, or not?"

If only.

"Just a minute!" he repeats. "I was—" Detained? Desperate? Dying for the little death? "Preoccupied."

He towels off, the nagging urge to stroke himself a mosquito-like whine in his head, eclipsed only by the nagging urge to smite the bathroom to shambles. 

* * *

He needs a bloody drink.

"Bye, Mom!" Beatrice chirps as she climbs out of the car. 

"Later, babe!" the Detective calls. "Pick you up at 5:30!"

"I knooow. Bye Lucifer!" 

Lucifer barely acknowledges the child as she trots off across the grass to join her similarly small friends. He presses the fingers of his left hand against his right middle finger, twisting and turning the onyx ring that isn't there anymore. That was _taken_ from him. He briefly rests his head against the window, only to shift again.

Pulling back into traffic, the Detective asks, "Is it okay if I sit you down with a sketch artist when we get to the precinct?"

"What?" he says.

"For Constantine. I'm gonna call the FBI. Visual aids might help."

"Ah. Yes, I suppose."

Her turn signal pops like a Snapple cap in the quiet. "Okay, what's up?"

Had he been that obvious? "How much longer? Twenty minutes?"

"About that, yeah."

Nodding, he grips his thighs, idly running his palms along them as the scenery inches past.

"Do you need to pee or something?" she says, frowning. 

He stills himself. "No."

She nods pointedly at the gas station several blocks up the street. At the rate traffic is creeping, they'll be at the turn-in soon, if they were to keep going straight. "We can stop there …?" 

"I said _no_ , Detective."

Thwarted, she taps her fingers against the steering wheel. " _Do_ angels pee?"

He barks out a laugh. "What a question!"

"Well, you seem nervous," she replies, "and I thought a non sequitur might—"

"If I've drunk something, yes," he answers with a half-curtailed snort. "Not as bloody often as you, though. You humans are sieves, I tell you."

"That's"—she squirms in her seat, like she's suddenly aware of the many cups of coffee already collecting in her bladder—"that's fair."

He snickers.

The Detective turns right and zippers slowly out of the short merge lane. And … he's back to flipping the air vents open and closed and open—

"So, what's wrong, then?" she says.

A sigh blusters through his frame. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters if it's making you upset." 

He clenches his jaw, over and over and over. Hopefully he can't crack his teeth when she's around. "I only meant it doesn't matter within the context of this conversation, because there's nothing to be done about it."

"Maybe talking would help anyway? You never know."

He plays with the door handle. And the seat visor. And his cufflinks. And his nonexistent ring. And the radio again.

She manages a gritted, "Lucifer—"

"Bloody hell!" he erupts. "You and Doctor Linda are like magpies, but you collect _feelings_ instead of shiny buttons."

The Detective smiles a little. "I mean … also fair."

The silence stretches.

"You're … not worried, are you?" she asks in a small voice. "About me giving you some kind of accidental command at work?" 

He turns to her. "Detective, are _you_ worried?"

"I get that after we leave Linda's, we'll be with your peers, not your therapist, or strangers you don't care about, or … or your family." She tests the word "family" on her tongue like she's taking a bite of foreign food. "I'm a woman working in a male-dominated field—a former actress to boot—I get having to fight tooth and nail for just an _inch_ of respect. And I get why you wouldn't want to fall apart in front of your peers."

"It's true," he allows slowly. "I do not."

"But I thought we did okay at Linda's on Sunday," she babbles onward. "And yesterday when we were shopping. As long as I can see you, I catch the problems quickly. Don't I?"

"You're quite quick, yes."

"But I'm human. I can't be diligent all the time, and I _hate_ that your wellbeing relies on—" She claps her palm to her mouth. "Oh, I almost did it again. P-punished—I'm … I'm sorry."

His chest aches, for once having nothing to do with the fleeting, serrated grip of memory. He rests a hand on her bicep. The warmth of her skin soaks into his palm.

"Detective," he says softly, "I assure you, my uneasiness today is entirely unrelated to our work."

"Then … what?"

"Will you, _please,_ accept that I've no desire to discuss it with you?" 

Her lips part, and she takes a breath like she wants to protest. Like she wants to keep drilling his psyche as a dentist drills cavities. But she doesn't. "Do you want to skip going to Linda's, too?" 

"Going to Linda's is okay." 

"God, that doesn't even sound like you. If only we knew how the hell I …." Her words trail away. 

He wishes he had comfort to offer, wishes he had answers like how the hell _did_ she make him okay with going to Linda's, because he'd like to know as well, but he's as set adrift as she is. The physical strain of his predicament aside, he has no idea where he begins or ends anymore. 

_Just like you were worried about with Dear Old_ Dad, _except not paranoid delusion this time,_ someone purrs against his ear. _Not delusion at all._

His insides roil. The road beyond the windshield stretches as his mind hurtles down a rapidly constricting tunnel. His heart throbs like a war drum in his—

Something warm grips his hand. 

"Do not touch me!" he gusts, the thought connecting unexpectedly to his mouth.

The warmth withdraws. "Sorry! I'm sorry. I thought … when you touched my arm …."

He gasps, his perception snapping back into the car cabin. Into reality. The glare of a red light makes him blink. 

"Sorry, I thought it would help," the Detective continues. Her eyes are bloodshot. A little puffy.

"No, I," he says, lost in the profound unfamiliarity of being listened to. Of being able to _complain_. "You … you simply startled me." And she felt different. The antonym of Her. 

Of Lilith.

Making a choice, he holds out his arm.

"You're sure?" the Detective says.

He scoops up her hand before she can drown in self-doubt. At first, she's limp in his grasp, but then she shifts, and his knuckles are jammed together by a grip that hints of desperation. 

Like … she needs it, too.

"Is this okay?" she murmurs.

"Yes," he says. "Yes, thank you."

Her eyes soften. Just a little. She doesn't speak. Only nods. The light turns green. She strokes his wrist briefly with her thumb before accelerating.

* * *

"Then it's official," Lucifer snarks as he stares at the printouts laid across the Doctor's coffee table, "I've a brain, after all."

Analise the cleaner has yet to make her visit, but the Doctor's apartment still smells of citrus and bleach, and no new messes have proliferated in her kitchen or living room since Sunday, at the very least. 

"Yes. Yes, you do," Dr. Linda answers with a grin. "With all of the regular features of a human brain, to boot." She leans closer, scrutinizing the black film. "There's your brain stem"—she drags her pen through the air over the drawing, along the vertical column near the bottom of the picture, before shifting to an oval-shaped structure closer to the nape of his shadow version's neck—"and your cerebellum." She gestures to the bright arch in the center. "This smaller blob right here is your corpus callosum"—she points finally to the squiggly bits forming a shell around everything else—"and the big blob surrounding it is your cerebrum. If I didn't know you weren't human, I'd call you textbook Homo sapiens." 

"Well, I did tell you I'm physically perfect, did I not?" Lucifer says. 

"You did; you did." 

The cushion squeaks as the Detective reaches for her phone and opens her notes app. "So, what does this MRI thing mean for _Lucifer,_ exactly?"

"I haven't talked to my colleague yet," Linda hedges, "so I'm loath to jump the gun on an official diagnosis. I should know more very soon, but in the meantime, I'd like—"

Lucifer closes his eyes, shifting— _not_ squirming—as he lets his awareness slide toward oblivion. Going to Dr. Linda's is okay. _Being_ at Dr. Linda's is most decidedly not. And he still needs a bloody drink.

A distant ringing fills his ears. He's become all too aware that he aches. Every sinew. Every muscle. Though he'd settled somewhat since his shower, he'd still rut with a bloody couch cushion if he thought it might get him somewh—

"—cifer?" 

Both the Detective and the Doctor are looking at him like he just admitted to watching the kittens up for adoption at Petsmart—which he does, sometimes, when he's very bored, but he wouldn't ever say so. 

"Lucif—"

" _What_!" he snaps.

The Doctor doesn't flinch. "I was asking you what you thought about that." 

"Thought about what?" 

"About my plan."

"What plan?" Dr. Linda and the Detective share a long, concerned look, prompting him to snap once more, " _What_ bloody plan?"

The child shrieks from the bedroom. Dr. Linda leans forward in her chair.

"No, no," the Detective says, waving the Doctor back. "You two do your therapy thing. I'll get him."

"You're sure?" says the Doctor.

"Yeah. I imagine you want some privacy anyway."

"Not particularly," grumbles Lucifer, massaging his temples. _Don't bloody leave me_ , he doesn't whine.

Which only prompts a discerning frown from the Doctor. Like he's some kind of apple, and she's peeling off his too tight skin, strip by bloody strip. He clutches the pillow in his lap so hard his fingers shake. The back bedroom door opens and closes, officially leaving him alone. With her. The apple peeler. 

Lovely. 

He glances over Dr. Linda's shoulder at the entryway. 

How far is fifty feet, precisely? He could—

"What I was saying earlier," Dr. Linda begins slowly, bringing his helter-skelter focus to bear, "is in lieu of a diagnosis, I'd like to just talk with you today. See how you're doing. Check in."

He _really_ needs that bloody drink.

He prowls to the liquor cabinet along the wall. The scotch he'd drunk a few days ago is gone. Had he polished it off? Only tequila and vodka remain. His nose wrinkles. Neither are his preference, but any port in a storm, as they say. He snatches the _Gran Dovejo Reposado_ , not even bothering with a shot glass.

"Will you add this to my bill?" he asks, lifting the bottle to the sunlight to display the label. The gold-colored liquid sloshes inside. "Simon will pay you with interest once my affairs are in order again. After he returns from his bloody _pony_ trek, that is." 

"Pony trek?"

"Yes. It's apparently a thing you humans do; Dad knows why." He tips back the bottle, taking a swig that makes his eyes water and his throat burn and his head swim. _Bless_ the Detective's presence. He should bring her to therapy more often.

"Lucifer, I'd prefer you not drink when we're in session," says the Doctor. 

"But—"

"Lucifer, please. Stop deflecting, and put the tequila down." 

" _Deflecting_ ," he laughs out. "I am not—" At her unerring, reproachful expression, he screws the cap onto the bottle, and sets the tequila where he found it. 

"Thank you," she says gently. 

He slinks back to the sofa.

"So," she continues, "will you talk to me?"

"About?"

"Maybe … why you're deflecting today?"

"But I am _not_ —" The reproachful look returns. He folds his arms and changes tacks to, "No, thank you." 

"How about whatever you want to talk about, then?"

"Is 'nothing' an option?"

She tilts her head at him. "I won't force you, Lucifer. If you're not getting value out of this, we can skip it."

"Ah," he says with a nod. "I see. Reverse psychology, now, is it? I've read about—"

"Nope."

Her placid expression confuses him. He runs his palms nervously along his thighs. He feels heavy. Both bunched too tight and stretched too thin. _I miss feeling interested_ , Lilith purrs in his ear, and he stiffens. A scab he doesn't want to pick. 

"You," Lucifer asks, "won't require me to discuss my memory loss?" 

"We don't have to talk about _anything_ ," Dr. Linda answers. 

"Like a normal session, then?"

"Exactly."

Something that had been stretched taut inside of him loosens a little. His fleeting idea of darting out the door at light speed—just to see how far momentum might carry him before his mind shatters—evaporates. He takes a long, cleansing breath, marveling briefly that he can fill his chest again.

"There is … something," he confesses. 

The Doctor picks up her notepad and pen. "And what is that?"

"Trying circumstances aside, the Detective is unhappy with me, and I cannot discern the cause. I don't like it."

"What makes you feel as though Chloe is unhappy with you?" 

_You can't just_ do _things,_ Lucifer can still hear her yelling.

"Well, she has lamented that we're not a team, but … but that's preposterous." He flops onto the couch, stretching out along his spine. "Of course we're a bloody team. We've _always_ been a bloody team."

"How would you define a team?"

"I don't know. People who work together? What are you getting at?"

"Working together as in working in proximity?" Dr. Linda prods. "Working toward the same goal? Working in proximity toward the same goal? What defines _together_ to you?"

"Proximity toward the same goal, I suppose?" 

Dr. Linda purses her lips, considering for a moment. "Often, I find when people lament about not feeling like part of a team, it has nothing to do with physical proximity. A lot of couples therapy I do involves getting both parties to feel emotional proximity."

"But the Detective and I have perfect emotional proximity!"

Dr. Linda raises her eyebrows. "Do you?"

"Yes!"

"No one has genuinely perfect proximity to another person, Lucifer. That's what makes us individuals." Her cushion squeaks as she redistributes her weight. "Can you think of any moments when you felt apart from Chloe, even when you were technically supposed to be teammates? Moments you felt alone despite her being right next to you?"

Which … when she puts it like that …. He wrings his hands as he admits, "Yes."

The Doctor nods, leaning forward. "Can you tell me about that?"

"When she found out about me, and then she left," he says. "When she asked me how many people I'd killed—as if I could ever kill _anyone_ without feeling the weight of it for eternity." A bitter, biting laugh falls from his lips. "I … but she was shocked. Of course she was shocked and needed space. Father Kinley preyed on her very understandable doubts. _He_ was the villain. Not her."

"Lucifer, I'm not asking you to assign or mitigate blame. That's not what this is about."

"Well, what is it about, then?"

"Can you tell me how you felt when Chloe left?" The apple peeler at work. 

Disquiet stirs. He runs his fingers along his forearms. "It felt … awful."

"But how did it feel awful?"

Like his hope had died in the gruesome throes of scaphism. But he shakes his head, sitting up to slouch over his knees.

"What about when Chloe asked you how many people you'd killed? How did that make you feel?"

"Doctor, I really don't like to—"

"A bit like you're alone in a crowded room?" she suggests gently. 

Yes.

"Like … you're not being heard?"

"But, of _course_ , she heard me; she—"

"I don't mean literally, Lucifer. But you spent three years showing her who you really are, only for your efforts to be ignored when she saw your other face. She didn't even give you a chance to explain. Isn't that what you're saying?"

"I suppose," he says, directing a dark glower toward the rug.

"Do you ever think about how things _could_ have been different if she'd given you a chance to talk after Pierce?" 

"Only about once every minute after she left," he snarks.

"What about since you've come back, clearly having experienced some kind of trauma?" Dr. Linda asks.

His throat constricts, feeling like he swallowed a wine cork and the bloody thing got stuck. 

"If … she hadn't gone to Father Kinley," he admits, "I might not have needed to return to Hell." The demons might never have figured out he hadn't been on vacation anymore. "I might have been able to stay. To live in my _home_." To not wake up in this bloody _nightmare_ , stuck in an aftermath, his free will gone in a puff of smoke. Dr. Linda takes a moment to write something on her notepad. He tries not to think about the similarities between the soft scratching sounds of pen scribbles and the rhythmic snick-snick-snick of an apple peeler. "She keeps expressing ire over the fact that I left, but I _never_ desired to …." 

"Is she, though?" Linda asks, looking up.

"Is she what?"

"Expressing ire over the fact that you left?"

"Of course she is," he replies with a shrug. "Every bloody chance she gets."

The Doctor puts down her notepad, clutching the metal spiral at the top. "Lucifer, this is absolutely not to say your feelings aren't valid. They are. Always. But I've never once heard Chloe malign the fact that you had to leave, and she seems to understand the stakes that were involved. Is it possible you heard Chloe's words in a way she didn't intend?"

"Well, how _else_ would you interpret her sniping, then?"

"Tell me about Chloe's 'sniping.'" Dr. Linda uses air quotes. "What did Chloe actually say to you?" 

_You can't just_ do _things._

He relates the fight he'd had with the Detective on Sunday night, word for word. Benefits of eidetic memory. At least, until he'd been forced to submit. He remembers snapping, and then … the crushing wave of her desire for his capitulation had, at last, dragged him under, and he'd drowned. She'd pulled him back to the surface once she'd noticed, but … the rest of the night is … a bit of a tired blur. He's _still_ tired. 

The tightness in his chest returns. "That's … all I'm able to recall." 

"That's fine. I think that's enough to go on."

His eyes ache. He rubs them. 

"In all of that," Dr. Linda notes, "I didn't hear you recounting Chloe expressing ire over you leaving."

"You can't just _do_ things?" he says, echoing the Detective. "What _things_ besides me going to Hell could she have had in mind?"

"That's … not how I'd necessarily interpret that."

"Well, don't leave me in suspense, Doctor." He gestures at her, giving her an expectant look. "Do go on."

"Do you think it's possible Chloe didn't feel heard?" 

"What do you mean?"

"The way she recounts it, you told her you were leaving, and then you left. In the space of minutes. Is that not how it went?"

"Yes, at least, the part of the night I can recall before the big bloody hole in my head begins, but"—he grimaces as the bird of prey clutching his heart flexes its talons—"but what could she possibly have had to say that would have changed the outcome?"

"What could _you_ possibly have had to say that would have changed the outcome of Chloe seeing your Devil face?" Dr. Linda counters.

"Well, I don't bloody know because I wasn't given a bloody chance!" 

"Exactly," she says with a definitive nod. "You don't know. And that's my point. Chloe doesn't know, either. Maybe—probably, in fact—there was nothing in the world she could have said to make you stay, but getting a chance to discuss the problem _matters_." Dr. Linda makes a swirl in the air with her pen. "For a whole host of reasons. Closure—the knowledge you did the very best you could. Also validation—feeling heard. And _proximity_."

"You're saying all she's bloody mad about is me not giving her a chance to talk me out of going, even though I knew there wasn't any point in bothering? That I made her feel alone in a crowded room?"

"I think it's worth considering."

The idea that he'd caused the Detective to feel _anything_ like he had when she'd fled for Rome without word ….

 _We used to have such a great rapport_ , she'd said.

"I … no." He launches off the sofa to pace. "No, this cannot be as simple as you're making it out to be."

"Why can't it?"

He stops, gripping the back of the couch. "Because I'm a _fantastic_ listener. Ask Ms. Lopez. No, it has to be something else."

"Lucifer," Linda says in a no-more-bullshit tone, "you are _not_ a fantastic listener."

"Of course I am!"

" _Lucifer,"_ she says more stridently, gesturing. "Come on. Do you not see the irony in this conversation?"

"But—"

"Hey," a soft voice interjects.

He grinds to a halt by the end table, and both he and the Doctor glance toward the hallway. 

"Detective," he murmurs, feeling inexplicably like he got caught raiding the "garage" to corrupt the humans. The tips of his ears burn. He'd forgotten she was still around. "I …." 

Bloody hell. 

She stands with the child draped against her torso. "Hey," she repeats, swaying back and forth, patting the baby with a splayed palm. Telltale white earbuds rest in her ears. "Sorry to interrupt. I swear, I wasn't listening or anything. I just wanted to mention we need to get going soon, or we'll be late for my shift. I only filed for half the morning off."

Lucifer struggles to contain a relieved sigh. "Lovely! I suppose that's it, then."

"We can stay a little bit long—"

"No, no," he rushes to say. "We should leave _immediately_. Wouldn't want to be tardy my first day back."

"Lucifer," Dr. Linda interjects, shaking her head vigorously. "Lucifer, you _cannot_ —"

"Nice chatting, Doctor," he says, offering her what he hopes is a serene smile despite his heartbeat pounding in his ears. "Apologies, but we must go."

"Right. Yep." She rubs the bridge of her nose, pushing up her glasses as her brow furrows. "Shoulda seen that coming."

The Detective offers a baffled-sounding, "I really didn't mean—"

"Ta _ta_!" Lucifer says with a slight wave. 

Then he bounds for the door with what little dignity he still possesses, happy to flee into the waiting arms of plausible deniability.


	12. "bloody Devil gizmo"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys. I'm taking a bit of a social media break right now. If you're relying on my Twitter, Tumblr, or Discord posts to let you know when there's a new chapter up, I encourage you to subscribe instead. Barring that, I just want to reiterate that my posting schedule is Sundays and Wednesdays, roughly 8-10 a.m. UTC-7. Thanks everybody!

By the time Chloe exchanges pleasantries and hugs and call-me-if-you-need-anythings with Linda and heads outside, Lucifer is already sitting shotgun in her cruiser, which is parked along the distant curb. His long fingers are back to futzing with the air vents like they're some kind of musical instrument. She scans over the hood of the car for threats. Nothing.

"I simply didn't wish to be there anymore," he says, snippy and bristling as she sits beside him in the car.

"I wasn't gonna ask."

He directs a sharp, quizzical gaze at her. "You … weren't?" 

"I figure your therapy is none of my business unless you decide it is. That's the whole point, right? Privacy so you can work out your stuff?" She'd been telling the truth when she said she hadn't been listening to the session. All she'd heard of Lucifer and Linda's exchange was the tail end, when Linda had been saying something in exasperation about irony. Which … is kind of how Chloe imagined Lucifer in therapy might go: much exasperation; little forward movement for a slew of effort. "Really, it's no big deal."

"It's not?" 

"Nope. It's not." She pulls down the visor to block the morning sun. "Ready to head to work?"

His eyes narrow, an infinitesimal movement only made obvious by the lessened gleam of sunlight reflecting off his irises. Like he can't quite figure out her angle, but he's certain she must have one. He stops fiddling. Instead, his thumb and index finger tighten against his lapel, puckering the seatbelt over his sternum. 

"Do," he asks slowly, " _you_ have something you'd like to make my business?" 

"Huh?"

"Have you any wish to speak of something particular whilst I listen and comment in response?"

What the …? 

"Any lingering, burning issues causing you discomfort?" he continues. "Like STDs, but with thoughts?"

She frowns. "Not … right now, no. Lucifer, _what_ —"

A muffled squawk on the radio interrupts. She reaches for the receiver, still staring incredulously at Lucifer and his … Luciferness. "This is Detective Decker, over."

"We've got a one-eighty-seven in West Adams. Are you available? Over."

" _Are_ we available?" she asks Lucifer.

"Do I not _seem_ available to you?" he challenges.

"Lucifer, I've got no clue what you're talking about."

He scoffs, redirecting his gaze out the window. "I thought so. Of _course_ she's wrong."

"Who's wrong?"

But he refuses to answer.

"So," she prods, "yes or no on heading to the one-eighty-seven?"

Thanks to the suit he'd walked away from Alessandro's with, Lucifer's moved beyond the disgruntled-NBA player motif he'd sported over the weekend. But thanks to the rush that morning, he doesn't seem to have completed his grooming ritual. His hair is curling, not slicked back with product, and his stubble forms more of a forest than a sexy five-o’clock shadow. Between that, the bags hugging his eyes, and the paleness of his complexion, he seems … worn. The effect is magnified when he wipes his face with his palms, breathing deeply like he might scream.

"Lucif—"

"Yes, yes," he huffs, waving a hand at her, "let's get on with it, shall we?"

"I'm not gonna make you do something," she counters. "If you don't want to go anymore, then I'll figure something else out. How to … to 'dislodge' you or whatever." 

"Detective, I am not a _barnacle_."

"Well, no," she says. "I just meant …." Then she catches the mischievous glint in his eyes. He's _teasing_ her. She can't help the smile that stretches across her face. His snark is definitely something she's missed. "Thanks for the tension breaker."

"Of course," Lucifer says, inclining his head. "And I've not changed my mind, Detective. I wish to work with you again. I _desire_ "—he searches for a word, his lightbulb moment following a blink—"proximity." 

"Unit Eight-Three-One, please respond," chirps the voice on the radio. "Over."

She expels a slow breath. "You're sure about this?" 

"Quite, Detective."

She clicks the receiver. "This is Unit Eight-Three-One. I can head straight there. Over."

Dispatch rattles off an address.

"Ten four," Chloe says as she inputs the street and house number into her GPS. "Unit Eight-Three-One responding. ETA: Thirty minutes. Out."

* * *

She doesn't need to double check the address once she turns onto South La Brea Avenue. The shocked crowd milling by the police tape is enough of a tell tale, and that doesn't even take into account the long, snaking line of flashing lights near the scene. She inches past the bright morass, looking for a spot to pull in, but there isn't one. Police vehicles nearly stack on top of each other in the house's tiny driveway. News vans line the curb. 

"Perhaps the next block over?" Lucifer suggests.

She accelerates, zipping to the nearest right-hand turn. While La Brea is a busy thoroughfare, directly west of it is nothing but quaint, quiet neighborhood. She pulls into an open spot and places her police placard onto the dash. As she climbs out and stretches, a hummingbird zips past her ear, aggressively chip-chip-chipping at her. The opposite car door makes a thunking noise, and Lucifer straightens, brushing off the lapels of his slightly ill-fitting suit. 

"Such ornery little buggers," Lucifer says, watching the hummingbird dart toward a flowering bush peaking into the sky through a rusted wrought-iron fence. She can't help but notice the subtle twitches at the corners of his mouth, like he's trying not to smile. "I don't think Dad remembered to tell them they're the size of a bloody jellybean."

Grinning, she checks her gun holster and pulls on her coat. "Ready?" 

"Indeed."

Hitting the lock button on her key fob, she steps around to his side. The lights flash once, and the car beeps. As they shift into simultaneous stride along the sidewalk, he puts his hand at the small of her back, his fingertips gently brushing her spine. 

She sucks in a breath. 

"Are you all right?" he asks.

Nodding, she can't resist leaning closer. His body is warm and solid, and though the familiar scent of vanilla and sandalwood is absent, given their rush out the door that morning, he's still so undeniably him. She's missed the contact—freely offered, not bathed in doubt—so very much.

"I'm fine," she says softly. "More than." His arm creeps around her back, and he pulls her closer. "Thanks for asking."

"Of course, darling," he replies.

For a brief, blessed moment, she almost feels like it's old times—before he left; before Eve; before Pierce—and nothing has changed. He isn't her slave. She isn't constantly scanning her surroundings for demons wearing human suits. Lilith isn't looming at the reins of his unknown trauma. 

"Let's go," she says, and they do.

* * *

Several uniformed cops loiter outside the house on La Brea, taking notes and statements from bystanders. Up the sidewalk, a few houses down, a news anchor talks into a microphone before a camera. Officer Hwang seems to be the senior officer on site. 

Lucifer parts the milling crowd with a soft, rumbling, "Excuse us, if you will." He underlines what he says with something unspoken. Some dark crackle of foreboding that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and goosebumps sprawl down her arms. Like he's advertising the top of the food chain has arrived. "Yes, yes, coming through." 

His flashbang "otherness" makes people back off, questions loitering in their eyes. Questions he doesn't deign to answer or acknowledge. He lifts the crime-scene tape for Chloe, allowing her to duck underneath, and prowls behind her without word. 

"Hey," she calls, waving at Officer Hwang. 

They make eye contact over the shoulder of the woman he's interviewing before his gaze shifts to Lucifer. Hwang's expression brightens almost imperceptibly before he schools himself, returning his attention to the woman. When Hwang finishes his questions, he folds his wrinkled steno pad closed, and ambles over. 

"Lucifer!" Hwang grasps Lucifer by the shoulder. Lucifer compresses his ensuing meltdown into a barely noticeable nervous twitch. "My man!" continues Hwang, lowering his hand obliviously. "Long time no see." He turns to Chloe. "You never said he was coming back!"

"Yes, it was a bit of a last minute decision," Lucifer says. "How fare you and Jang-mi?"

"Excellent, excellent," says Officer Hwang. "Expecting, actually." 

"Oh, dear," Lucifer replies with not so mock horror. "You've my sympathies."

Hwang laughs. "Listen, thanks for the markdown on that house. It was _exactly_ what we needed. That extra bedroom couldn't have come at a better time. We just passed the first trimester, so we're starting to tell people."

"Of course, I _will_ collect at some point, Officer Hwang. I don't give to humans out of the goodness of my heart."

Which only prompts another laugh. "Right. Anything you need. Just let me know. And, seriously, welcome back! We've missed you around here."

"Yes, I've"—Lucifer's stiff posture relaxes a little—"I've missed it as well. Thank you." 

Chloe pulls out her pen to take notes. "You the lead right now?"

Hwang nods. 

"So, what can you tell us?" 

"The house is abandoned. Lot's been on sale since 2014. A neighbor lodged a noise complaint around 4 a.m. Given the property's history of break-ins, the officers who were sent felt it prudent to check the premises. They saw the body through the window." 

"Do we know anything about the victim yet?" Chloe asks. "Or the homeowners?"

"Not yet, no."

"Witnesses?"

"Mostly just angry neighbors asking if this means we're finally going to condemn this place." Hwang leans close, adding conspiratorially, "It's a bit of an eyesore."

Lucifer scoffs. "You've quite the gift for understatement, Officer Hwang."

A "bit" of an eyesore is definitely a kind description for the ramshackle mess of plywood and brick. The house in question, built in the 1920s, is only about 1200 square feet and has no front yard, only a small sidewalk between it and the street. Knee-high weeds push through copious cracks in the surrounding pavement, all along the walk and in the driveway. Clinging vines, probably at one point elegant, have sprawled over the arbor framing the backyard gate, and climbed over the roof. Chipping, cream-colored paint covers the exterior. The windows and doors are boarded over and barred. Neon graffiti scrawls across the front. The side wall closest to them sports a meticulous depiction of a spurting penis. Some of the art is simple, though, like, "Rogelio was here, 2014." Like the house is some kind of derelict mecca for delinquents.

"Who lodged the noise complaint?" Chloe asks.

Hwang nods at the woman he'd been interviewing, a tall blonde, mid-thirties, wearing a garish hoodie with an ornery-looking turkey on it. Hwang pulls out his notepad, reading, "Ms. Nicolette Cade. Neighbor. Stated she heard 'banging.'"

"Oh, did she?" Lucifer says, his eyes gleaming. 

"No, man, literal banging," Hwang clarifies. "Like bang, bang, bang."

"Figurative and literal banging can intersect when participation is particularly spirited, I'll have you know." Lucifer's mischievous expression only sharpens. "A headboard clapping against the wall, perhaps?"

A loud BANG! like thunder cracks through the air over the crowd, followed by a chorus of startled shrieks and gasps. Chloe's hand flies to her gun holster. Lucifer grabs her shoulder, pulling her behind him. BANG! BANG! Not a gunshot. The sound is too hollow. Too rattly for a gun or explosive. 

"I suppose not a headboard, then," Lucifer decides.

"It's all right, folks!" an officer near the curb calls. "Everything's fine—just the house settling."

"More like a house throwing a bloody tantrum," Lucifer snarks. "Are you all right, Detective?"

"Yes," Chloe says sharply, swallowing. She sags as unwanted adrenaline tumbles through her bloodstream like an acid bath. "Yes, I'm fine." She gives herself a shake, stepping out from behind him. "I'm the one with the flak jacket, you know."

He shrugs, not even bothering to look chagrined. "Reflex."

"Yeah, so," Officer Hwang chimes in, "I'm pretty sure Ms. Cade meant banging like"—BANG!—" _that_." 

"Yes, yes, I stand corrected," admits Lucifer. 

"What _is_ that?" Chloe asks. 

"We can't figure it out beyond the fact that it's coming from the house," says Hwang. "But the building inspector certified the structure, at least. It's not gonna collapse or anything. Not today, at any rate."

"So, we can go in?"

"Yes, ma'am. Just watch your step."

"Thanks," Chloe says. "I guess we'll"—BANG! BANG!—"see what we see."

"Perhaps observe the banging," adds Lucifer. 

She rolls her eyes, which only makes a lecherous-looking grin twitch onto his face, before she turns away to wander along the front of the house. 

"Searching for anything in particular?" Lucifer asks over her shoulder. 

"Nope," she says. "Not yet."

She rises onto her tiptoes to peek over the back fence. The house has a tiny private yard, but it's paved over. Barely large enough for the small rotting shed and three rusted-out garbage bins filling it like anchovies stuffed into a tin. Another raucous nondescript BANG! echoes through the space, bouncing off the brick and cement surfaces. One of the trash cans tips over with a resounding metal clang. Not the same sound as the banging.

"Do you have _any_ idea where that's coming from?" she asks, turning to Lucifer. "Like can you"—she gestures vaguely—"use your Devil hearing gizmo?"

He snorts. "My Devil … _what_?"

"The I-can-hear-everything-in-a-three-block-radius thing?" 

"All I can tell you is it's loud."

BANG!

"Well, _I_ knew that much, Lucifer."

He sighs, leaning against the fence. "There are too many surfaces for the noise to echo from"—he glares at the milling crowd, another snarl pulling at his lips—"and too many bloody people _talking_. I can't even pinpoint the direction." He rubs the bridge of his nose like he's developing a headache. "One of the disadvantages, I suppose."

"Disadvantages?"

"Of the bloody 'Devil gizmo.' Being able to"—BANG!—he cringes—"hear more acutely isn't better in many circumstances."

"How in the hell did you ever stand Lux, then? With the bass, and the people?"

"I was accustomed to it. Though that doesn't mean I can pinpoint everything that's going on inside when there's a full dance floor. I am not a bat just because I've some unfortunately veiny appendages." He cocks his head at her, grinning impishly. "For once, I admit, I didn't mean that to sound as innuendo-laden as it did."

Her heart constricts. "You still have those?"

"The innuendo?"

"The bat wings."

"What? No. No, they've gone. They were gone before I left." 

"Oh." She takes a breath.

He frowns. "They frightened you that much?"

"They don't scare me at all," she says softly. "I just don't like what they seem to mean to _you_. I wasn't lying when I said I like you when you're happy." He stiffens, opening his mouth to reply, but she holds up an index finger. " _Not_ that I'm demanding you be happy right now. Not a command. Like so totally not."

He relaxes. "Detective, I—" BANG!

She gives him a sheepish look. "Maybe we should try solving the murder instead of having this conversation right now.”

"You are correct, of course." He grins. "And I admit, it's rather fitting my first case back with the LAPD should begin with a—" BANG! 

She chokes on a laugh. "Well. Speak of the Devil."

"I swear; I didn't plan that."

She rolls her eyes again, if only to see his delight at her supposed consternation. "Yeah, yeah," she adds. "Just get thee behind me, already."

* * *

A uni whose name tag reads Devereaux stands at the front door, his arms folded, massive biceps bulging. She doesn't recognize him, and he regards them both with a passive expression. "Who are—" BANG! He flinches. Sighs. Settles. "Who are you guys?" 

"Detective Chloe Decker," she says, flashing her badge. She gestures to Lucifer. "This is my partner, Lucifer Morningstar. He's a consultant for the LAPD."

"Ah, yeah, I heard of him. Thought he was gone."

"Clearly not, as I'm standing right here," Lucifer grits out. "Really, _why_ must people—"

Devereaux holds up his hands. "No offense, man. Just what I'd heard." He laughs. "Honestly, the 'Devil' is probably the best backup you could get for this one." 

"What the bloody hell does _that_ mean?" 

"You'll see," Devereaux says, stepping aside. He gestures inside like a twisted version of Vana White. "Body's in the bedroom."

Chloe pushes past him into squalor, Lucifer following behind, muttering, "I hope this isn't Satanists again. Has no one anything better to do?" 

The living/dining area is nothing but rotting out, water-stained carpet, scurrying roaches, rat droppings, and the skeletons of what used to be furniture. The kitchen, which resides to the left beyond a dilapidated, collapsing divider, doesn't look much better. All of the cabinet doors hang off their hinges. The appliances are gone, either pillaged or removed. 

As soon as she shifts from breathing outside air to stuffy, decrepit "house" air, the funk of death wallops her, nose to gut. BANG! Like a baseball cracked against a bat and sent flying. She coughs as her eyes water. 

BANG!

The noise—stupefying—rumbles deep in her chest, full of bass, enough to make her flinch despite herself. It definitely came from somewhere inside the house. Even Lucifer can't conceal a wince, or his subsequent scowl as he rubs at his ears. 

"Got wintergreen, Detective?" calls Devereaux from the stoop. BANG! "You'll need it." 

"I do, thanks," she croaks back at him.

She rubs a heaping smear of it above her upper lip and under her nostrils, replacing the rot reek with a dumptruck's worth of mint. She offers the tube to Lucifer, but he shakes his head.

"I've no need of such things," he says. 

"Can't you smell it even more than I can?"

He arches an eyebrow, as if to say, _And?_

His unblinking gaze sends a shiver down her spine. Not human, she reminds herself. Not human, not human. The King of Hell, for crying out loud. He's probably seen and smelled so many worse things than a ripe dead body. Just like the noise at Lux, he's probably "used to it." Which is … sobering. 

BANG! 

"I'll take some bloody earplugs if you have them, though," he grouses, his scowl deepening.

She does, actually. For the firing range. Foam ones—like little pool noodles—that cram into the ear canals and then expand, blocking out sound. 

"My, my," Lucifer says as she foists the packet at him, "how prepared you are."

"Hah hah."

He regards her warmly. "I meant that as a compliment, Detective. It would seem I've a case of runaway innuendo today." The plastic crinkles as he pours the plugs into his right palm. "Thank you."

BANG!

"Okay, where the hell did that come from?" she says.

A laugh barks from Lucifer's throat.

"Yeah, we can't seem to figure that out," someone interjects before Lucifer can descend into his inevitable that's-what-she-said joke. 

A single forensics tech—a new academy graduate she's only worked with once so far. Crouched in the corner of the front room, taking photographs. The camera clicks, and the searing flash illuminates a creepy crawly with lots of legs as it flees through a gap in the crumbling crown molding. Which of _course_ makes her feel like something is skittering down her spine.

"Hey, Tony," she says, shuddering.

"Howdy, Detective," says Tony without looking up from his camera. "Pretty yuck, huh?" He points down the hallway. "Gets more yuck back there. You might wanna put on a mask and goggles for this one."

She grabs a set of nitrile gloves and booties from the boxes set out on the divider, giving the boxes a pointed look as she slaps the gloves onto her fingers. Something she always does when they're at a crime scene together. Something Lucifer almost always ignores. This time, though, he pulls a fresh set of gloves from the XL-size box. Oops.

"I just meant if you want to," she says under her breath before he can put them on. 

He shrugs, donning them anyway, and after regarding the scummy floor with a distasteful expression, grabs a pair of booties for his new shoes. "It's my only pair, after all," he explains. "Wouldn't want to destroy them on my first day."

Nodding, she picks out a surgical mask and glasses, also. Lucifer doesn't budge this time. Instead, he's staring further into the house, his eyes narrowing at the open doorway at the end of the front hall. His expression is cold, almost reptilian. 

"Lucifer?" she asks as he stalks away.

" _Lucifer_?" Tony says, perking up. "The crazy consultant nobody can shut up about?"

"What is it?" she calls, trotting after Lucifer, only to end up with a face full of sharp shoulder blades and gray Burberry when he stops short. "Oop!" Her hands fly to his waist, grabbing at his jacket. 

"Lucifer!" says Ella as she bounds from the back bedroom. "Dude. _Dude_. I am _so_ glad you're here. You have _got_ to give me the low down on ghosts, like, stat."

"What?" He steps aside, giving Chloe space. "Why?" 

"Because," Ella replies, her eyes wide behind her safety glasses, "I'm preeetty freaking sure this house is"—BANG!—"haunted."


	13. "total cosmic clusterduck"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double header today! Thanks for all your kind words :)
> 
> P.S. Just wanted to mention in addition to being written before S5, this was written well before COVID. Lol.

"That's preposterous," Lucifer scoffs.

"I know, right?" Ella says, making a face. “You’d think ghosts would want to haunt someplace a little more upscale, but—"

"There is no such thing as ghosts!" 

"Oh, yeah?" BANG! "Then explain ghost rules!"

He peers at her like he thinks all of her marbles hopped on the express train to Looney Tunes. "I … beg your bloody pardon?"

"Ghost … rules?" Ella repeats more doubtfully.

"Yes, I heard that. What in bloody Creation do you mean by _ghost_ rules?"

"Well, Rae-Rae sai—"

"Rae-Rae!" he barks, the sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a woeful, _Why me?_ He directs a blaming glare skyward. "Of course."

"Yeah. Yeah, my … uh." Ella looks at Chloe with a helpless shrug. "My ghost buddy? She has rules. Remember, I told you about—"

"I remember," Chloe confirms, nodding in support. "Lucifer, she's being haunted by … by _something_. I believe—"

"My sister," says Lucifer.

"Huh?" Ella says.

He sighs. "What you have experienced, Ms. Lopez, is real, indeed. Only, she's not a bloody ghost; she's my sister. The Angel of Death." 

Ella's lips part, and her hands fall slack against her dirty lab coat. "Whaaat."

"You were in a car accident when you were younger, yes?" 

"Well, yeah, I almost die—" Her mouth clacks shut as she shakes her head like a windshield wiper in slow motion. "Dude. Death— _the_ Death—gave me a mulligan?"

"A mulligan?" Chloe interjects. BANG!

 _"The_ Death has never met you, I'm certain," Lucifer counters, "or you _would_ be quite dead. And a mulligan is a do-over, darling. Some silly sporting term. Golf, I believe." 

Ella's eyes are wide. "Again, I say: huh?" 

"A do-over?" Lucifer repeats. "Really, why use the term if you don’t know—"

"No, I mean, what do you mean by _the_ Death?" Ella glances at Chloe. "Also, it's used in cardgames a lot. Nerd things. It's not just for golf."

Chloe feels like she got left by the plane at the gate. 

"So, _the_ Death?" Ella says, turning back to Lucifer. "Like, _the_ Devil?"

"Death of the Endless, my dear," he explains. "She's a different specie—"

"Still a chick, though?" 

BANG! "Yes. But be that as it may, my sister merely serves as her not-entirely-willing ferry. There is Death, and then there is the Angel of Death. Two separate women." 

Ella squints at him. "You mean … Rae-Rae is like Charon?"

He taps his temple with the tip of his index finger before pointing at her, smiling at them as if to say, _Now, you're starting to get it. Good show._ "Azrael _is_ Charon, Ms. Lopez. Myths, after all, evolve with time and tale."

"Dude." Ella takes a deep breath, as though she's trying to keep herself from rocketing into the stratosphere. " _Dude_ , are you saying that you—as in you, Lucifer, the guy who sits in my lab listening to me drone on for hours about science—are like … totally Hades?"

"Not _like_ ," he counters. "I _am_. At least so far as the Greeks were concerned."

" _Dude_!"

"I'll admit," Lucifer says, staring into space, "it's a name I've not been called in ages, though."

"Dude?"

" _Hades,_ Ms. Lopez. Lately, it's only been Dante's libelous tripe harshing my mellow." He sneers wolfishly, showing the edges of his front teeth like fangs. "That man bloody deserved what he got."

"What did he get, exactly?" asks Chloe.

"Exactly what he wrote," Lucifer replies with a smirk. "Over, and over, and over—I suppose he felt guilty for dragging my good-ish name through the muck."

"But … you knew Dante?" Ella squeaks.

“We used to be what you would colloquially refer to as 'drinking buddies.’ Until he wrote _that_ , the arse."

"No way. No _way_!" Ella gathers her fists in front of her chest, clenching them so hard they vibrate. " _Nooo_ way."

"Way, Ms. Lopez."

"But if myths are just twisted versions of reality, then who the heck is Persephone?"

He cringes as though the thought brings him physical pain. "Yes, well." BANG! "That story was purely myth." 

"Really?"

A bemused smile tugs at his lips. "I'm not precisely a fan of kidnapping and subjugating women, you know. Or anyone, really—Ms. Lopez?"

Ella runs in place like she intends to sprint to the moon. "New. Head canons. Forming. As we speak." She presses her knuckles to her clenched teeth, careful to leave a bubble of space between her soiled gloves and her mouth as her attention pingpongs between them. She gasps, again, again, again, a chuffing train on its way to hyperventilation. "Oh, my God. Oh, my _God_." 

"Really, _must_ you bring Dad into this?"

Chloe sighs. "Guys …."

A tiny shriek—squeal?—catches in Ella's throat. "Chlo, you _really_ need to look up what your name means, sometime."

Lucifer steps between them, holding up his index finger like a sword. "No." 

"I wonder if the people writing Persephodes fic know you guys are right here, living in LA, solving crimes?" She makes a sound like a high-pitched, repeating "e."

"You read," Lucifer says, his eyebrows contorting strangely, "Persephodes fic?"

"Well, I didn't know it was about you," Ella retorts. "And I definitely don't think the writers would believe me if I told them it should be Chlodes." She frowns. "HaDecker?"

"Bloody hell, woman, no!"

"But—"

" _Guys_ ," says Chloe, clapping her hands between them, "as fun as these enlightening existential conversations are, can we focus, please? On the murder?"

"Right. Sure. Right." Ella nods, shallowly at first, then deeply, as though she might start head banging to some unheard metal anthem. "Focusing now. Wow, Rae-Rae makes so much more sense right—" BANG! BANG! "You know … that sure does seem like a ghost."

"I _told_ you," says Lucifer, "the idea is _preposterous_. There is no such thing as ghosts!"

" _Wow_ ," says someone else.

Chloe, Ella, and Lucifer turn to find Tony gaping in their direction. His heavy camera hangs from his neck by a blue fiber cord, cinching his bulky forensics jacket awkwardly. "So … is this y'alls usual process or …?" He gestures at them, making vague circles with his splayed palm. "Because _wow_."

"Oh, yes," snarks Lucifer. "Just a regular bloody Tuesday here."

"It's like an episode of _Supernatural_! Have y'all watched that show?"

"How _dare_ you! I am nothing like that Satan. That Satan is whiny, and petulant, and—"

"—To be fair, I've _occasionally_ heard Detective Espinoza say—" 

"—and _evil_ ," Lucifer snaps, shutting Tony down cold.

BANG!

"Sorry." Tony backs away. "I … I really only meant about the ghosts, sir."

"There _are_ no bloody ghosts! Why does no one bloody listen to me?"

Chloe resists the urge to cradle her face with her gloved hands. "Did you need something, Tony?" 

"Um, no,” he replies. “Nope. All good here."

"Maybe you should go back into the living room," she suggests gently.

BANG! "But I can still hear y—"

"Tony, I really need you to dust this for prints," blurts Ella as she pulls a shiny pink iPhone from her pocket. “Pronto. Would you do that, please?"

Tony makes a face like she just suggested Elvis is alive and well and living in the forensics van. "Isn't this your personal cellphone?"

"No." Ella winces. "Yes." She bites her lip before bursting out with, " _Look_ , it's for science, okay? We need a control group to confirm our fingerprint procedures are working, and I'm entrusting it to _you_ , buddy." She jabs the phone at Tony's chest.

"If you insist," he replies, flinching forward with his arms to catch the device before it drops, "but—"

"Go!" Ella, Chloe, and Lucifer all echo at once, shooing him away.

As soon as Tony steps outside, past Officer Devereaux, Ella lifts her sleeve with a gloved hand and rubs her brow with her bare forearm. "Whew. That was close. This is a whole lot more stressful when I know it's, like, totes for real."

"Except for the bloody ghosts," Lucifer grits out. "Which, I assure you, are _not ‘_ totes for real.’”

"I don't know, Luce. I mean"—BANG!—"ergo ghosts?"

Lucifer points past her shoulder. "Is the body in there?"

Ella moves aside. "Yeah, dude. In the closet. Don't walk inside yet, though. I'm still catalog—"

Ignoring her, he stalks by, around doorframe, his surgical booties whisper silent as he glides across the decaying carpet. Chloe darts after him. Ella follows behind. 

The master bedroom is large for a small house. A collapsed king-sized bed rests along the back wall. French doors almost hanging off their hinges separate the bedroom from a sink with a vanity. To the left of the vanity, an empty doorframe opens into the bathroom. To the right, a rotted but still solid door.

"Why's it closed?" asks Chloe.

"Because it super smells like Death died in there"—BANG!—"and I was trying to save your stomach a little."

"Death of the Endless is endless, Ms. Lopez," Lucifer says easily. "Hence the name. She wouldn't die. Not here, anyway."

"Whatever! The point is … it's a bit of a nose riot in there."

Chloe grimaces. "Even worse than _this_?"

"Open and see," Ella says. “But don’t go in.”

Sure enough, as soon as Lucifer pulls on the closet doorknob, a frigid blast of air shocks Chloe's lungs, and the stink of death billows like a noxious, fuming cloud, even through the surgical mask and the slick of wintergreen beneath her nostrils. She coughs, pressing a gloved hand over her nose. Her teeth chatter despite her nausea. 

"Oh, _God_ ," she groans, trying not to heave. "Shit. Fuck."

"That, I'll allow," Lucifer snarks, glaring upward.

He doesn't even look moderately queasy. How the hell can he—

BANG! Chloe flinches away, swallowing repeatedly. 

From just outside the closet, the bang sounds like a freight train crashing through a tunnel. Directionally, the noise seems to be coming from the space beside the corpse. BANG! The rotting wood reverberates, drywall dust spiraling to the floor with the impact, but there's nothing visible hitting the wall. BANG! 

"See?" Ella says. "The sound is c-coming from right there, but heck if I know what's causing it."

BANG!

The body—a male—is naked. He hangs by his wrists from a chain looped under a pair of handcuffs. The chain drops from a bolt hole in the sagging ceiling. A rusted metal rod—like a fire poker, about three feet long—rests at the victim's toes, which dangle an inch above the floorboards. A faint, glistening sheen covers the skin. Typical of late-early stages of decay. But the riotous smell would fit more with the late-mid or late stages. 

Violent shivers rack Chloe's body. 

BANG! BANG! BANG! 

Chloe tries to center herself, but the stench is unreal despite her desensitized nose, and she can't stop her teeth from chattering. 

"So, this is a p-pretty weird one, even without the soundtrack," Ella says. 

"Is this house air c-c-conditioned, or something?" Chloe asks.

"Right?" Ella exclaims excitedly. "The ambient t-temperature in this room is like … holy North Pole, Santa. But we can't find a thermostat or an air conditioner or even a working _fan_. And it's all localized to right at the spot this poor d-d-dead guy's hanging out!" She gasps. "Oh, my God, is Santa real, t-too?"

Tremors race through Chloe's frame like electric current. "Um."

They both turn curiously to Lucifer, who's staring into the space surrounding the corpse like he drifted out of his own body. Shivering, Chloe follows his gaze. The body hangs from thick chains, just like the ones Lucifer arrived in. It's naked, just like Lucifer had been. Bruises mar the chest and belly and thighs, like the victim had been abused before death. Abused like Lucifer. A metal collar with a dog tag labeled "Puppy" encircles the victim's neck. Black ligature marks coil around the throat, thick enough to be visible above and below the collar. Also a bit like Lucifer. 

"Lucifer?" she prods.

"Hmm."

"Are you okay?" 

BANG! He snaps out of his reverie, his gaze shuttering. "Ms. Lopez, precisely how long has this body been dead?" 

"Impossible to t-tell, really, given how freakishly c-cold it is in here," Ella answers. "But based on how the body _looks_ , and the fact that, y'know, it hasn't f-fallen down from the cuffs as the skin separates, and the muscles turn to gloop _,_ I'd say somewhere between one and three days?" 

"Days," he barks. 

"Yup," Ella says. "Days." 

He laughs, sounding nervous. "I don't suppose there've been any recent natural disasters in populated areas, have there? I can't say I've been paying much attention to the news as of late." 

"There was a b-b-bit of a rumbler in Tokyo yesterday, but—"

"Define 'a bit of a rumbler,'" he says, using air quotes. "Are we talking California standards, or—" 

"Like a five-point-three.” She beams. "Some bookshelves fell over, I'm sure."

"How many deaths?"

"I think one? Some poor d-dude got hit by a falling rock."

"No, no, that wouldn't do it. Not at all. Has there been any sudden mass mayhem to speak of, natural or otherwise? Think Spanish flu epidemic, compressed into a matter of hours. Perhaps a rousing bout of bubonic plague?"

"Um … no," Ella says slowly. "No, I don't think so. No plague p-parties." 

"Did Mount Vesuvius cough up a lung again? Nothing like a spot of pyroclastic flow to get the bodies mounting."

Ella's nose wrinkles as she peers at Chloe, who can only shrug helplessly in return.

"Well, do check the news, if you will!" He waves at them, clapping his hands. "Chop chop. We haven't got all day." 

"But … I gave my phone to Tony."

With a sigh, Chloe extricates her phone from her jeans pocket. There's nothing but political mayhem and garden-variety gun crimes on CNN. Same with the Times, WaPo. She can't find anything on Reddit, either. 

"Whatcha thinking, Luce?" Ella adds innocently.

"There," Chloe says, foisting her phone at him. "Unless you c-c-count wars, terrorism, and murder—"

"Those are normal attrition factors," he interrupts dismissively. "So violent, you humans."

"Well, unless you count those things," Chloe grits out, "everything _is_ normal."

"Right, then," Lucifer says, expression nothing short of panicked. 

"Lucifer, what—"

He holds up a hand, shushing her. "Hold that thought, will you?"

Then he vacates as she stares in disbelief. Luciferness abound today, it seems. O … kay then. She turns to Ella. "So … any info on the v-victim?"

"You're not gonna chase after him?" 

"He'll come back when he's done being”—Chloe gestures vaguely at the doorway—"being Lucifer, I guess." He can't go far, regardless. Which is, she's surprised to realize … an amazingly reassuring bit of knowledge. One can only get up to so many Devilish shenanigans in a fifty-foot radius chock-full of cops. … Right? 

"Right," says Ella, trailing away. "Well." She glances at the closet, taking a breath as she reorients herself. "No, no info on the guy. He wasn't wearing any clothes or identification. I'm f-frankly not even sure what killed him, though his abdomen appears slightly distended, more-so than would be the c-case with corpse bloat at this stage. Might mean internal bleeding? The bruising indicates some level of abuse …." She points to the metal rod on the floor. "Maybe the murder weapon?"

"Hmm," says Chloe. "Torture?"

"I think you need to wait for the autopsy." 

Chloe stares at the body, the noisome reek of it coiling through her gut like angry snakes. She swallows. Again, again, again. Trying to shove her nausea away. 

The man was brown-haired, a dusting of gray at his temples. Wisps of crows feet hug the corners of his eyes. He's slightly overweight. About 5'8". No tattoos. No piercings or jewelry. Aside from his shackles and collar, he wears only an inch-wide metal cylinder, wrapped around the base of his penis, but the metal has no markings. As far as she can tell, he sports no identifying marks whatsoever, which is … unhelpful.

"Were there signs of sex—" She coughs, dry heaving once, twice. “Sexual assault?" 

"There are sketchy fluids all over this c-c-closet." Ella whips out her blacklight, lighting up a bunch of interesting stains in varying shapes and sizes. "I took samples. Won't know more until I do some testing.”

Chloe slams the door shut again before she loses her stomach contents. The smell recedes to a more tolerable level. So does the chill. With shaking fingers, she squirts another dab of wintergreen under her nose, taking gasping breaths. Better. A bit.

"The neighbors are unhappy about this house being here in this condition," she says. "Maybe someone snapped? Pulled a stunt like this to get it condemned?"

"I got nothing, sorry," Ella replies. "I was _so_ convinced this place was haunted." BANG! "What else could the noise and intense freezer effects be from?"

"It's a soul."

Chloe and Ella turn as Lucifer rejoins them. "Dude," Ella says, "you _just_ said there's no such thing as ghosts! Multiple times, even!"

"And there bloody well isn't!" he snaps. "Not in the sense you mean. This is a disembodied soul—"

"You mean a ghost."

"Ms. Lopez, a soul is not a ghost. This is not some echo of a former person, twisted by trauma or unresolved conflict. This _is_ a person, only"—he pauses, searching for a word—"de-gloved."

"Is that what killed him?" Chloe asks. "Something … ripped him out of his body, or …?" 

"No," Lucifer says. "No, this is what happens to all mortals when they die. The tethers are clipped, and the soul ejects."

"Death is the metaphysical equivalent of de-gloving?" Ella exclaims, sounding horrified. "Seriously?"

"Well, _I_ didn't bloody design the process!" Lucifer snaps. "What's wrong here is that for some reason my sister and her lackeys, instead of carting this man off to Heaven or Hell, have allowed him to languish. And, while I've heard tales from my various wards"—souls, he means—freaking damned _souls_ —"of them getting behind schedule occasionally, it's always been after a disaster of considerable proportions, and they've _never_ been late by more than a day or so."

"Really, you can see a soul?" Chloe says. "Like … you can just see it? Floating there, or …?"

"I assure you, Detective, my visual acuity is up to the task."

"Well, can you talk to this guy?" Ella adds, wide-eyed. "Ask him how he died? Who killed him? Who he even is?"

"Oh, he's useless for smalltalk in this medium,” Lucifer scoffs. "Souls aren't meant for residing on Earth. Why do you think he's making such a bloody racket? He's essentially flailing about like a landed fish." BANG!

"Well, that's"—Ella cringes—"kinda awful."

A lump forms in Chloe's throat as the noise takes on a new context. BANG! That this is someone in pain. Someone who's suffering. Mere feet away. While they're all just … standing there. "How do we put him to rest?"

" _We_ don't," Lucifer snaps. "This is Azrael's bloody job. Or one of her helpers, at any rate."

"You can't sub in for a one-off?" says Ella hopefully.

"Not bloody happening." 

"Please, can't you help him, somehow?" Chloe asks softly. 

Lucifer’s back thumps against the opposite doorframe, his teeth grind into each other, he sucks in a breath, and his fists clench by his hips like he's struggling not to cry out. 

"No, no, no," she rushes to say, closing the gap between them. "No, I'm not asking you to—" Fuck. "I didn't mean for you to drop everything and go. I just meant to ask you if … if you're even capable of helping?"

His shoulders sag as he exhales. The beginnings of blush—arousal—wisp along his cheeks and throat. For a moment, he's quiet, dazed, like he's just trying to get his head to stop spinning. 

"I … feel like I'm missing some subtext here," Ella says doubtfully.

"It's nothing," Chloe assures her. "Don't worry about it. He's just … um." BANG! Maybe he refuses to lie, but she has no such compunctions in these circumstances. "He's tired is all." She wants to squeeze his wrist to offer him reassurance, but she restrains herself. Under her breath, barely audible, she adds, "Sorry."

"Yeah," Ella says. "I imagine the jet lag is _epic_."

"Jet lag?"

"Between here and Hell."

"Oh. Oh, yes, right." Chloe laughs. "Jet lag. Yeah."

Ella flings open the door again—assaults them with miasma again—and cups her hands around her mouth. "Hello? Anonymous Dead Guy? Can you hear me? I promise we are _on_ the case, buddy. We got your back. Or … um. Front?" She gestures to the corpse. "Which way is he facing, anyway?" BANG! BANG!

"He can't hear you, Ms. Lopez, no matter how much you shout," Lucifer says. "Souls aren't meant to linger in this fashion. They aren't built for it. They need a body to experience the sensory input this plane provides."

Ella slumps. "Oh."

"To help him," he says slowly, "I would need to carry him to his destination." 

Chloe's stomach flip flops as the potential implications sink in. Sheer distance trials versus this compulsion aside, he's Lucifer. He's Fallen. With the insane time differential, he's spent eons or more away from Heaven. Eons. His conflict with God is, quite literally, Biblical. Even if he’d had Mysterious Reasons, even if reconciliation were possible someday, it's irrelevant now, because _Lucifer_ isn't in the headspace for that yet. Not to imply he owes God a damned thing _ever_. 

"Can you even tell where this man is supposed to go?" Chloe asks.

"Handling the dead is neither my gift nor my purpose; it's Azrael's and her ilk," Lucifer says, shaking his head. "I can speak to souls once they're situated in Hell or Heaven. But … like this?" He gestures to the body. To the soul. To the victim. "I'd be guessing."

"Well, what happens if you drop someone off in Hell when they're not supposed to be there? Didn't you say souls are untethered?"

BANG! 

"He wouldn't remain in a cell forged of guilt, since he would have none to forge a cell with, but he would still need to catch the ferry out, so to speak," Lucifer explains. "He'd still be in Hell until Azrael arrived to redistribute him."

"And Hell … is …."

"Hell is Hell, Detective."

"Where a bunch of demons who love to torture things"—torture _him_ —"live. Everything tastes like ash. And millennia are crammed into months."

"Yes."

"So, even if we skipped Heaven altogether, and risked dumping him into Hell as a stopgap, we wouldn't really be improving his quality of li—d-death." BANG! She sniffs, trying not to let her emotions run amok. "We might, in fact, be making it worse for him."

"That would be my assumption, yes."

"Man.” Ella emits a low whistle. “This's"—BANG!—"just a total cosmic clusterduck, isn't it?"

"Indeed, Ms. Lopez. Might I suggest praying to dear Azrael?" He clears his throat. "Ehm. Rae-Rae? She seems to be ignoring me today—she might be more inclined to answer you."

"Right-o," Ella says with a nod, the bright sound of her palms as they clap together like an exclamation point. "Totally on it, boss."

BANG! 

Chloe flinches again with the noise, her eyes watering. The idea of leaving a fellow human being—what was once a human being, anyway—flailing around in agony is—

"Shall I to try to calm him?" Lucifer asks.

Like … he needs her to enable him for something his overarching commands don't cover.

"Yes, please," she says. 

The soft, rustling sound of feathers fills the quiet, illuminating the decrepit, funk-filled room like a warm summer day. His wings stuff the tiny space from floor to ceiling. The tips of his lucid white plumage brush against filth. Soak in rot reek. Yet … he does it anyway. This man who refuses to hire a cleaning service because they're unable to find every speck of dust. This man who can't tolerate Trixie's sticky fingers.

"Ms. Lopez, if you would be so kind," Lucifer says softly, gesturing to the side.

Ella skips out of the way for him. "Please, don't step on the carpet in—"

But he stops. Right at the threshold. A few feet from the body. And then he reaches with his long, lithe arms, resting his gloved hands on a thin bubble of air surrounding the bruised ribcage. 

Chloe can't pick up her jaw. Nor can she stop the deep, resonating ache his luminous wings punch into her sternum. 

He tips his head back, his eyes closed, and his beautiful light burgeons. Inhuman-sounding, multi-toned words spill from his lips. 

The Sound of him fills to the brim what few gaps are left in Chloe's body. Until she's more than full. Until she's bursting. She wants to dance, and cry, and laugh, and love, and be. Endlessly. Just from the hearing of It. 

She can't understand, and yet she Knows. 

His word is Word, and she Believes. 

_Forbear_ , he commands in Other syllables. _Forbear, human, and Know. This trial will end, as do all earthly pursuits, in time._

He folds his wings, the warm light dwindling like a desert sunset. He closes the closet door again. And then, with another rustling noise, his jagged feathers fade out, disappearing as though they never were.

Ella crosses herself. "Holy shirt." 

The spell is broken when he scoffs noisily, giving her an irritated look. "No one in this room is holy, Ms. Lopez, least of all me."

Chloe would beg to differ. That's the most holy experience she's ever freaking _had_. 

"What did you just do?" Ella asks. 

"I've simply spoken to him in a way he might understand," says Lucifer. "Perhaps he'll calm until Azrael or someone from her staff decides to show. But I've no way to know for certain. Soothing a traumatized soul is not something I've attempted before. As I've said, it's not precisely in my wheelhouse."

Chloe swallows against the massive lump in her throat. "I love you for trying, regardless."

He expels a huffy sigh like she ruffled his physical feathers. 

"Can all angels do _that_?" Ella asks, still staring at him. "Like Rae-Rae? She could …?"

He bristles. "Really, Ms. Lopez, all I did was Speak." 

"That was _way_ more than just talking."

He glances at the exit like he wants to run. 

"What's _your_ gift, anyway? Ella prods.

"Hmm?"

"Your gift. Like you said Rae-Rae's is to handle the dead. What's yours? Is it desires and stuff?"

"Of a sort," he admits, inclining his head at her. "I am the Lightbringer. I spark and stoke fires. I draw out the hidden. Figurative, literal. Light is _mine_."

Except he doesn't just own light. He _is_ light. If the enchanting display he gave them means anything. "Yeah, I can see that," Chloe says softly, unable to stop herself from blinking out tears. "That fits. Seriously, thank you."

"Do let's get on with this investigation, shall we?"

"Right." Chloe nods. "Right. Yes, let's."


	14. "safe word"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd I'm up at midnight again. I seem to be nocturnal on weekends lately. Please, enjoy :)

After Lucifer's light show, the noises stop, and the old house quiets as if fresh snow had fallen. The clamorous crowd chafing against the police tape, however, explodes any potential silence as well as a frag grenade. They gossip and speculate and gossip some more, like a gaggle of frenzied yentas. Chloe and Lucifer wander from person to person, canvassing for anyone with pertinent information to share. By day's end, though, they've heard nothing new or useful. 

"Will Azrael come soon?" Chloe asks Lucifer, as Ella and Tony take turns with a metal dolly, rolling forensic gear back to the police van. 

"Your guess is as good as mine, Detective," Lucifer answers. "She's ignored my prayers. Ms. Lopez's as well, or so I presume, given the significant lack bounce in her step." 

Ella does seem to have traded her normal effervescence for the jittery movement of a caffeinated spider.

"Why wouldn't Azrael come?" Chloe wonders.

"That," Lucifer admits as a police cruiser pulls away to make room for the coroner's vehicle, "is a far more worrisome concern. One I've, unfortunately, no way to allay. Until she deigns to answer a prayer, we're in the dark."

"Yeah." Chloe sighs. "I was afraid you'd say that.

One by one, the problems are mounting.

* * *

By the time Chloe and Lucifer make it back to the cruiser, the sun hangs low in the sky, stretching shadows of all the trees and light poles into twiggy, skeletal spindles. 

"So, this was," she says as they settle, "a day."

His seatbelt clicks into place. "Indeed." 

"Ghosts, but not really." She pulls her fingers through her hair instead of turning the key in the ignition. "What next? Santa _is_ real?"

An abrupt exhalation that could be a laugh fills the space beside her. "Not quite."

"What does _that_ mean?"

"You really wish to know?"

Not really. Not yet. Her head might explode. "I still can't wrap my mind around all this supernatural wuwu stuff being a thing, sometimes."

His eyebrows creep upward. "Wu … wu?" 

"Yes, _wuwu_ ," she retorts. "It's an accurate description!" 

"I suppose."

"I only justgot used to you being, well"—she gestures vaguely at him—"you. Lucifer, Literal Lord of Darkness, King of Hell." 

"And would you go back?" he asks, directing a dark, hooded gaze at her. "To a time before my truth seemed truthful?"

"Never." His dishevelment instills an urge to brush his hair out of his face. To touch him. Something. "I _love_ that I know you."

He tilts his head. "But you knew me before, Detective."

"Not like now. I'd … miss it."

A hint of a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. His sigh is deep and content. "I assume paperwork is next on the agenda, until the lab results trickle in, and we can form hypotheses?"

"I think so, but that's probably gonna have to be tomorrow." She glances at her watch. At this hour, by the time they reach the precinct, they'll just have to leave again to grab Trixie. Chloe grins at him. "Does this compulsion thing mean you'll actually help me fill out forms, for once?" 

All hint of warmth drains from his expression like she poked a hole in the bottom of his emotional bucket. 

"Sorry, that was a stupid thing for me to say," she scolds herself. "I shouldn't be making light."

"It isn't that," he grits out, the words tight in his throat, "it's—"

"Oh!" Shit. "I don't want you to help me with the paperwork unless _you_ want to. And I definitely don't want you to do it right this second, regardless."

He relaxes against the door, panting softly. 

Damn it. _Damn_ it. Talk about a conversation hijacker. Talk about a knifeshe can gut him with any time she relaxes too much or _feels_ too much or expresses an opinion with too much weight. "We need a word you can blurt when you're in trouble—something quick and reflexive—so I know unequivocally to fix it." 

"A safe word, Detective?" 

She nods. "Something you can say that I'll understand but that doesn't advertise your predicament to bystanders."

"Red."

"Red what?"

"My safe word, Detective. Not that I've ever needed to employ it before." He swipes his face with his palms before reaching to his left trapezius muscle, massaging it through his suit like he aches. "But having one makes the humans I've played with happier to participate." 

Her eyes widen a little at his casual drift into TMI, but …. "Okay, then." She will not ask what he means by play. She will _not_ ask what he means by— "Red." She will not _ask—_ "Does that have significance, or did you pick something random?"

"It's part of the color system—quite common for scenes. Like traffic lights. Red means stop, green means go, and yellow means slow down a smidge because a safe word might be incoming. A caution, if you will."

She will _not_ picture anything more than Lucifer playing Red Light Green Light with drunk Lux patrons. She will _not_ picture Lucifer lying naked on his big bed, tied up and blindfolded and—

"Perhaps I will," he says.

His voice snaps her out of the porno scene unfurling in her mind's eye. "Huh?"

"Assist you with the paperwork."

"Lucifer, you really don't have to."

"Oh, hush, will you?" he says, scolding gently. "It's not as though I can be elsewhere whilst you fill these forms and sundry out. In the absence of lab results, I might as well enable us to leave earlier, yes? Go for a long lunch, perhaps?"

"Ah," she says, snickering. "So, selfish reasons."

The way his eyes twinkle when he replies, "Entirely, I assure you," makes her belly feel warm and her chest ache in good ways.

"I don't know how we ever would have waded through this case without you, if the first day is any indication," she finds herself gushing. She brings her right knee up onto the seat and props her left against the steering wheel, turning fully toward him. She _still_ wants to reach across the center compartment. Grab his wrist. Touch him. Anything. He gives great hugs despite being perplexed by them. Instead, she vents the desire into squeezing her shins. "I've missed you. I don't think I realized how much until today. You change the whole dynamic of how I work. In a really good way."

He beams. "See, Detective? We _are_ a team."

"Well … _yeah_. Of course we are?" 

"Yesterday, you said we're not a real team. That we never have been. I think today rather proves we are, yes?"

His hopeful words are a chilling squall.

"Oh, Lucifer, I didn't mean like …." The warmth in her body drains away. "Yeah. We're definitely a great _detective_ team. Absolutely."

His brow creases. "What have I said wrong this time?"

"You didn't say anything wrong."

"I've made you unhappy again."

She rubs the bridge of her nose. "You didn't make me unhappy, Lucifer. You just …."

"I just … what?"

But she doesn't have energy for rehashing drama. Not today. "Listen, what you did for the victim … that was totally amazing. _You're_ amazing. Which I already kn—" The soft, sudden dragging sound of his slow inhalation interrupts her. "Lucifer?"

His dark eyes roll back, the leather seat cushion creaking as he arches in a sluggish-but-solidifying wave. His shoes jam deep into the footwells. His fingers clutch the seat by his thighs like he's desperatenot to fall _._ His chest and belly press into the seatbelt, and then … he hangs there, stretched out, bowed backward, lips parted, not breathing. 

"What is it?" she asks. "What happened?" 

He exults, the nonsensical sound sharp and guttural. His torso snaps into motion, his lower body twitching rhythmically against the lap belt. He gasps like he ran to Hell and back on foot. The seconds crawl. At last, he shudders, and then he sags, eyelids drooping to half mast. 

"What the hell was _that_?" she says. 

"Oh," he rasps, a bare moan, as he catches his breath. For a moment, he sits there in a glassy-eyed stupor, like cartoon birdies and stars are still circling him after a collision between his head and a two-by-four, and then, " _Oh_." More gravity this time. He presses shaking fingers to his face. "No."

"What's wrong?"

" _No_ ," he snaps, sounding less like he means to respond to her and more like he's beyond hearing her at all. His cheeks turn ashen. "I am not your bloody plaything!" 

"Of course you're not!"

But he doesn't seem to be listening. "Iwill not have this be yours," he lashes, a whip. "I _refuse_."

"What the hell are you"—he pops open the car door before she can finish, and then he's gone in a whisper of feathers—"talking about."

Fuck. Fuckity fuck, fuck. 

After checking the side-mirror for oncoming traffic, she climbs out after him. Her boots hit the pavement as she stands, looking in both directions. The sleepy street is lined with one-story detached homes. Kids are playing basketball in a driveway several houses behind her, laughing and cheering and chatting. Their irrepressible joy carries on the breeze, tickling her eardrums. 

Lucifer probably wouldn't flee _toward_ giggling children. 

She orients herself in the opposite direction, heading away from West Adams, past the pissy hummingbird who's still—between intermittent bouts of chip-chip-chipping at her—snacking on the big flowering bush behind the fence. When she reaches the intersection, she cups a hand over her brow to block the sun at the west-facing edge of her sunglasses. She looks left, away from the sun. Right, into the glare. Forward, splitting the difference. Nothing.

Where the hell could he have gone?

She risks a soft, "Lucifer?" 

Nothing. 

"Lucifer!" she adds in a harsher whisper, calling through her cupped hands. 

Leaves rustle. A lawnmower whirs at the edge of hearing. The sound of heavy traffic on South La Brea rumbles to the west, a bare, distant series of swish, swish, swish that melts into one long white-noise whoosh.

In the quiet, paranoia blooms, and she imagines a murderous demon bum-rushing her from the bushes. Her hand hovers by her gun holster.

"Lucifer?" she repeats more insistently.

"Here!" he croaks, the word a strangled, upset sob, like he didn't want to tell her a damned thing but couldn't resist anymore. The noise emanates from straight ahead, perhaps twenty feet away. "I'm bloody well here. _Please_ , will you stop _asking_ me."

A lump forms in her throat. 

"I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to force you." 

In retrospect, she wants to kick herself. He has freedom of speech, yes. He doesn't have to answer her, in theory. But calling his name while running around like a headless, stressed mother hen would definitely scream, " _I want to find you this instant_!" Which would leave him with little option to stay hidden. 

Fuck. 

Her attention falls on a white Expedition parked in the driveway one house down from the corner. A smaller car—a modern-ish blue Corvette, not like Lucifer's classic—sits alongside the Expedition, concealing the gap under the SUV's high undercarriage. But that doesn't conceal the feather peeking from behind the rear tire. Or the clump of feathers adjacent to it, all glittering like spilled diamonds in the sunlight. 

She claps her hand over her mouth. He's sitting with his wings out in broad fucking daylight? Luckily only the basketball players she left behind, her imaginary stalker demon, and whoever's running the mower at the opposite end of the cross street, seem to be out and about. Who knows who's gaping out their dining-room window, though? And a steady trickle of commuters should be arriving home from work soon. 

God. 

What a clusterfuck. 

She trudges down the walk. 

" _Please_ , leave me alone," he begs, sounding exhausted and small. "Please, Detective."

"I understand you want space," she tells him. Space he can't possibly have because he's stuck with her, and they need to get out of here. "I'm not gonna look at you; I swear." She stops at the Corvette and eases to her butt on the cracked pavement. "I'm just around the corner, but I'm not getting any closer unless you ask."

Beyond a huffy sigh, he says nothing.

"Should I tell you to fly home?" she asks, wrapping her arms around her knees and hugging them close. "So you can have some privacy?"

"No. No, please, I don't want to _feel_ that—"

"Okay," she says, nodding. "Okay, I'm just sitting here, then. Just around the corner. I'm just here." 

A hollow metal-sounding thump resonates, like he's pressing his head against the side of the SUV. Her chest aches.

"Can you," she asks, "maybe, put your wings away? Only if you want, of course. Last thing I'll say to you; I promise. It's just gonna be a bit easier for me to explain why two humans are sitting in some guy's private driveway than it is one human and one fallen angel." She laughs nervously. "A police badge only accomplishes so much."

He takes a shivery breath. "Oh." Like the idea somehow didn't occur to him.

A rustling sound follows, and the shining clump of feathers visible by the tire withdraws in a flurry of splendor. She relaxes, content to let him be, now.

Just in time, it would seem, because jingling precedes a man walking his Dalmatian on the opposite side of the street. The man frowns at them, staring suspiciously as the dog makes a pit stop to mark a bush. 

Chloe directs what she hopes to be a disarming smile in his direction, waving like the friendly neighbor chilling in her driveway she's pretending to be. 

The man waves back, doubts draining from his expression. The dog gallops until it reaches the end of its eight-foot leash, then rises to its hind legs, wheezing, as it tries to pull its owner along. The man says, "Whoa, girl!" Not that the strangling dog seems to care. They continue down the walk, alternating between trotting and strangling and trotting and strangling, before turning the corner, and heading out of sight. 

"I … fell," Lucifer admits in a soft voice. 

She tips her head toward him. "Before?"

"Now. At the wall where my freedom ends." He laughs unhappily. "What little I have, at any rate."

She glances at a seam in the sidewalk. "When I was sitting in my car, this was the edge of the fifty-foot radius?"

"As soon as I crossed, my body locked up, and I plummeted. The Devil, arse over teakettle in bloody suburbia. I'm certain Dad's howling with glee, if he's watching at all."

"I could try to give you a wider range? We didn't really test—"

"It's still a bloody radius," he snaps back at her. "Any freedom I have inside of a bloody radius is a bloody _sham,_ Detective. Changing the size of my cage doesn't change that."

She swallows back tears. If she could fix this mess for him, she would. 

"Being in a cage, being _tethered_ "—he says the word tethered as a guttural curse—"is a state I've been consciously aware of since I woke up naked in your bed."

His words feel accusatory, like he thinks she's done something to him. "What are you implying?" she asks.

"I'm not implying _anything_. I'm stating it."

"Look, I don't even know what happened just now," she says. "You were fine, and then you were having weird paroxysms, and then you were gone. For my part in it, I'm sorry, but beyond that, I'm not sure what you're fishing for me to say."

Something scuffs on the pavement. A hollow metal thunk sounds in the quiet again as his weight shifts. The shiny tip of his shoe appears at the edge of the Expedition, followed by a long, heather-gray-clad leg and torso. His eyes are red-rimmed, and his face is blotched. Like he's been not just upset but actively weeping. 

"It felt divine," he admits, looking down at her with betrayal painted on his features. "To be praised by you. Lauded."

"Felt divine like …?" She frowns, replaying the course of events in her mind. Replaying his "weird paroxysms." Which …. "Oh. Oh, shit, you mean you …?" She makes a vague gesture like fireworks with her hands, splaying her fists from closed to open. 

His molten glower is answer enough. 

Fuck. Fuuuck. She told the Devil he was amazing, and he came like an express train at rush hour. 

"Yes," he grits out. "And, while I'd considered I might require your permission to get my bloody rocks off, I had _not_ expected being told _I'm a good boy_ to bloody well do it _for_ me. I feel like a bloody pet dog."

Disgust curdles in her gut at the implications. Beyond having his feelings hijacked _again_ , it's like the compulsion was designed to engender Stockholm Syndrome.

It's _gross_. 

"We'll fix it," she decides. 

" _How_?" he snaps. "By commanding me not to feel pleasure at _all_?" 

"I could at least tell you not to experience a fucking orgasm when I compliment you!"

"And how would that solve anything if the pleasure component remains?"

She grimaces. "What about … don't experience pleasure when I praise you?" 

"Given that I've _always_ experienced some degree of pleasure when you praise me," he says in a low, threatening, done-with-it-all tone, "that feels rather like another bloody lobotomy, now, doesn't it?" 

She sags against her palms, burying her face in her hands. He's right, of course. Fuck.

"Lucifer, I …." She rises to her feet, scooting away from the Corvette to lean against the back of the Expedition. "I … I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry. I'll try to be …." _Careful_ , she doesn't add, cringing. What a pointless fucking platitude. She's _already_ trying to be careful, and look what's happened. 

"Detective, pain is one thing," he says, staring into space with wet, dark eyes. "I've learned to tolerate having it foisted on me. But … now it's clear you own my pleasure as well. As little as a kind word from you, and I've lost control of my faculties. I can't bloody control _anything_. I am _literally_ your pet, and it's—" 

He turns away, like he's trying to establish privacy for himself to grieve the abrupt passing of his bodily autonomy. But privacy is impossible without sending him away. Something he's asked her not to do.

"You could order me to die," he continues his expression flattening out into something distant, his tone similar, "and I'd make it happen. I wouldn't even be bothered by it if you told me to stop agonizing over it, first. And then, as I expired, you could praise me, and my end would be nothing but a song in my heart that I'd served you well. My entire sense of self-preservation—my entire sense of self—is flipped on its side. It's owned. By someone else. By _you_. And I have _nothing_."

"Lucifer, I promise you," she assures him, stepping closer without touching, "I would _never_ do those things to—"

"I can't even grapple with the idea that it's _possible_ ," he snaps, reanimating. "I …." He takes a rasping, struggling breath. And another. He tugs at his collar like he's starting to panic. "No."

"Lucifer," she says, moving around to his front. "Lucifer, this isn't an order, but _listen_ to me. It's _not_ possible. Okay? It's not possible."

"But—"

She presses her palms to his cheeks, drawing his scattered focused toward her. "Not an order, pull away from me if you want, but _listen_ to me. Okay? _Listen_. Just listen to me."

He sucks in a dragging, rough breath.

"It's not possible because it's _me_. Chloe. Your Detective. Yeah? I'm the one in charge of this nightmare, somehow, and I would _never do those things to you_. I can't even fathom how I could force you to do those things by accident. There is no oops in the world where I'm telling you to kill yourself and feel good about it."

He squirms in her grasp, his lips twisting into a sudden rictus of pain. "Stop," he croaks, a wet gurgle of sputum crackling in his throat. His fingers clench. "Stop. _Red_. Please."

Fuck. Fuck, too vehement. 

"Lucifer, I'm not trying to force you to be okay," she clarifies, trying to save the sinking ship. "You have every right to be upset; I don't want to take that away from you."

His surrendering, shattered sigh deflates him as he pulls away. She lets him go, stepping back with her arms and palms raised so he can see them. He only staggers a few steps before he stops, though. His fingers shake as he cups his face, panting shallowly. 

"Detective," he says faintly, "it's not _you_ who terrifies me. I've said I trust you, and I do. I'm …." A visible shudder courses through him. 

Her heart plummets like a stone off a ledge. "Did you remember something?"

But his eyes go glassy again. He takes another step, but without direction, almost aimlessly ambling. He bumps into the Corvette and looks down at it as though he's stunned it's there. "Please, I'd like to return to your apartment now. Please." 

Her heart twists. The sound of him so reedy and cowed feels wrong. "We've got to pick up Trixie, first. Dan's not available to sub in."

"Yes, yes, fine," he says, waving dismissively at nothing. He peers at the neighborhood like he's never seen it before. "Where is …?" 

The lump in her throat threatens to explode. She gently grabs his sleeve. "Back this way. Around the corner."

"Oh." He laughs. "Right." And then he traipses off down the sidewalk as though nothing had happened, straightening out his kinks in several strides. She flinches when he claps his hands. "Chop chop, then; the child awaits!"

What the hell …? It's like ….

 _He doesn't remember because he doesn't_ want _to._

Linda's words after their very first session echo in her head, though, now, they seem more like a harbinger and less like a simple caution flag. 

Maybe he _did_ remember something just now.

But he's so intensely fucked up by the recollection he erased it again.

The idea that someone could have hurt him so profoundly is ….

Well, really, there are no words. 

She rubs her tired eyes, collecting all the tears that have been threatening. Her head swirling, she trudges after him, back to her cruiser.

* * *

When they reach the car, he shuts down again, like a windup toy that ran out of cranks. 

"Do you need a change of clothes?" she asks. "Or … I've got a towel in the trunk?"

"No."

Still, he sounds so out of it, she can't stop herself from checking surreptitiously for a wet mark by his fly or on his pant leg. Nothing. As she pulls off the curb, he wraps his hands around his midsection and curls away.

She's never felt so fucking helpless.

He doesn't speak for the rest of the drive. 

Not even when Trixie bounces into the backseat with a chipper, "Hi, Lucifer! Hi, Mom!" 

Not even when Trixie gets a whiff of the crime scene remnants lingering in every pore and loose thread, scrunches up her nose, and whines, "Pee-ewe, what's that _smell_?"

"Definitely _not_ Clive Christian No. 1," Chloe laments, directing a brief grin across the car cabin at him, hoping he'll take the bait and at least chuckle. 

But he doesn't. 

He stares into space as though she hasn't even spoken, taking even, shallow breaths that snake fog along the window from his lips. Like … he's drifting far away from the inside of a government-issued vehicle trapped on Venice Boulevard in rush hour.

When she pulls into her assigned space in her apartment complex's tiny parking lot, he climbs out of the car, following her and Trixie dutifully to the front door. Once she snags her key in the lock and pulls open the door for them, he sighs and says, "I'd like a shower. I'm bloody filthy."

"Sure," she says. "Lucifer, I …."

He barely meets her eyes as he shuffles off the welcome mat, gesturing at Trixie. "The urchin is correct. We smell."

He thuds up the stairs. The shower runs for well over forty-five minutes. He's _still_ showering, even after she washes a little at the kitchen sink, and then slips into some loungewear. He doesn't even emerge when Alessandro's delivery person stops by with several garment bags full of tailored suits.

"His door is shut, Mom," Trixie announces later, clambering down the steps in her pajamas, as Chloe doles out boxes of Chinese takeout at the coffee table.

"That probably means he wants some space," Chloe says, her fork pausing mid-Kung Pao Chicken, "so, why don't we give him some?"

"But … why? I _always_ want hugs after bad days."

"Lucifer's … not exactly a hugger. And how did you know we didn't have a good day?"

"You smelled _gross_. Plus, he usually talks more. _And_ you ordered takeout without asking him what he wanted."

A ghost of a smile fleets across Chloe's face. She has a little detective in training, it would seem. She hands Trixie a plate full of rice and chicken, but Trixie doesn't take it, instead pushing it backward with a nudge of her index finger. 

"You should offer him some, Mom." 

"I think he would come downstairs if he wanted some, Monkey."

"Well," Trixie says as she eats a forkful straight from the container, "sometimes it's nice to be offered anyway. Isn't it?"

Chloe clutches the plate. It _is_ nice. Really nice. But … she can't stomach the idea of breaching his personal space right now. Not with their current power dynamic. Not when he's painting clear "keep the hell away from me" signs with neon letters. 

"I can't, babe," she whispers. "Not right now."

Trixie regards her, munching, this time straight from the moo shu pork container. Then she slides off the couch, grabbing the offered chicken plate, stacking a metal fork onto the side, and scampers out of the living room. Her tiny feet pound against the stairs like a galloping horse of considerably larger size, before Chloe's even grasped her daughter made a dash for it.

"Lucifer!" Trixie calls amid a frenzy of knocking. "Luuucifer, are you awake? Mom said not to bug you, but I'm not listening, because I don't want to, and you always say we should do what we want."

Chloe skids to the foot of the stairs, grabbing onto the bannister to stop her forward motion, as Lucifer's door creaks open, revealing a dark sliver of space beyond flushed skin and a haunted face. His hair is a disheveled mess, he's wearing nothing but silk boxers and an open robe. He blinks owlishly at them, his attention shifting between Trixie in the foreground, and Chloe in the background, down a floor.

"What is it?" he rasps, his voice strangely hoarse.

Trixie holds up the plate for him. "Dinner?"

He squints at the chicken. "How very red-dye number forty."

"Want it? It's really good. It's from our favorite place. You know, at the market? It's _so—_ "

"—good," he says, frowning. "Yes, I gathered the first time."

Chloe sighs, looking up the steps at him. "I _swear_ , I told her to give you space."

"You could eat it up here?" Trixie says before adding in a pitiful please-please-please tone, "Or you could come watch Netflix with us? You can pick the show."

His left eyebrow creeps upward.

"Please?" she says. "Please, Lucifer?"

"What's in this deal for you?"

She frowns. "Huh?"

"You're giving me food. You're offering the remote. What do you desire from this trade?"

But Trixie only laughs. "You're so weird. Are you gonna come watch with us or not?"

His lips form a flat, thin line. "I'll … consider it. I'm quite tired."

"Okay!" Trixie replies brightly. "I hope you feel better!" She jabs the plate at his belly. "You should eat cuz it helps." He takes the dish, a bemused expression plastered on his face, and she turns on her heels to skip back down the steps. "Bye, Lucifer!" 

Chloe offers him a chagrined grimace that hopefully says _I'm so sorry for my precocious, nosy, would-be-detective child._ Without more than a resigned glance in her direction, he withdraws into his bedroom, shutting the door gently in his wake.

She's surprised how disappointed she feels after such a brief flash of hope. She gets his need for space all too well, but … it's hard to watch him exercise it. Her instinct at times like this is to pull together with her loved ones, not shy away and hide or hibernate. 

Dishing up another plate of moo shu pork for herself, she and Trixie settle in to continue their _My Little Pony_ marathon.

They've made it perhaps fifteen minutes into the next episode when the floor in the upstairs hallway creaks. Then the stairs. The edge of his empty plate becomes visible around the corner, and then him. Barefoot, still in his robe and boxers, though, this time, the robe is tied shut with a silk sash. 

"Lucifer!" Trixie cheers. 

Chloe tries not to gape. "Did you want seconds or something?"

"I can't sleep," he says softly. Pointedly. "You woke me this morning."

Fuck. She snatches her phone off the coffee table and recites the command that allowed him respite.

"What are you _doing_?" Trixie says, making a face. 

"It's just a game we're playing, babe," Chloe replies quickly. 

"Like Simon Says?" 

"Yeah, like that. But a grownup version."

Lucifer adds nothing, his expression haunted and hollow, but he doesn't retreat to his bedroom, either.

"You," Chloe asks hesitantly, "want to sit with us?" 

He shifts on his feet, frowning at them, as though he isn't sure what to do. Trixie scrambles across the couch, sitting up and then sprawling into Chloe's lap like a breaching whale. Chloe grunts at the impact(s). 

"You can have the best spot!" Trixie chirps, gesturing to the seat she'd just vacated. "Plenty of space. See?"

"Indeed," he says. The word is soft and honey rich. Instead of joining them on the couch, though, after setting his empty plate on the coffee table, he slinks across their field of view and settles onto the recliner. Like … he wants to be near to them. Just not _near_. 

"Want to watch something else?" Chloe says, gesturing with the remote at the television. A bright Technicolor closeup of Applejack and Twilight Sparkle fills the screen. "I'm guessing this isn't your 'jam?'"

But he shakes his head, pulling the afghan off the top of the chair and curling underneath it, like he means to sleep—or at least rest—just not quite so far removed from them. 

"Please, continue," he says, a soft murmur.

Trixie starts the show again. By the end of the episode, his eyelids are resting at half mast, and his rasping breaths are even. He isn't watching the television or interacting with them, or even sleeping, so much as drifting. Like he wanted to wrap himself in their presence as much as he wanted to wrap himself in the afghan. Like … Chloe is his safe space. She and Trixie both. Or, maybe, Chloe's reading too much into it, and she's being silly. 

"Want more, babe?" Chloe whispers, dishing up another helping of chicken. "Or should I put this in the fridge?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who takes the time to leave feedback. It's such a treat for me to read your thoughts and reactions!


	15. "music"

He sits in the bright showroom, surrounded by dozens of gleaming pianos that play nothing in tune, suffocated by poor facsimiles of living people. He still wishes he had cigarettes to smoke. Wishes he had gin or scotch to drink. Wishes he had fine silk clothes to wear or the soft scent of an expensive perfume to drown the reek of brimstone. 

Most of all, he wishes he had something to satiate his growing, aching need for meaningful interaction. Something to stave off loneliness that should not _be_. Would not be. Were it not for her. 

His chest tightens unbearably as his thoughts ricochet to the Detective. To Dr. Linda, and Ms. Lopez, and Beatrice, and even bloody Daniel. None of whom he's going to see again. Ever. 

Well, perhaps Daniel. 

Bloody hell, he'd be grateful for _Daniel._

A lump forms in his esophagus. His eyes prickle. During his previous tenures in Hell, he'd never been so bloody preoccupied by what was absent. _Why_ must he— He coughs as he allows his fingers to meander across the ivory-colored keys of the Model D concert grand set before him. Notes plink and plank into the quiet. He sniffs, pulling himself back together like Atlas hoisting the world over his shoulders. 

Unbidden, the first few chords of _Eternal Flame_ spill into the air around him, wavering and hesitant, out of tune, twangy, before he squashes both palms flat against the keys. No. Not _that_ song. _Anything_ but that. Except, now, he's running out of time before—

"Thinking of buying, sir?" says the empty salesman with an empty smile. 

"No," replies Lucifer as he stares into space. "There's no bloody point."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Of course you bloody well don't understand, because you're not real. You've no bloody brain. You've no bloody _thoughts_. You exist only as a background bit part in some guilt-mongering fool's personal Hell. You're an extra. Nothing in this dadforsaken place means anything to _anyone,_ and all this so-called instrument does is paint my memories _wrong_."

"But—"

With a roar, Lucifer shoves the piano, the hammers jangling against the strings. The instrument smacks into the wall, and the should-be-beautiful East Indian rosewood splinters along the grain—a cacophonous cascading crash. Caving to meet with gravity, the back of the nearly nine-foot-long piano forms a lopsided letter V with the floor. 

Lucifer's ragged panting cuts the air like a saw.

Before the salesman can react with more than wide-eyed stupefaction, the showroom dissolves, replaced by the city block in front of the Steinway factory, a dreary little two-lane road split by a double yellow stripe, the curbs jam-packed with parallel-parked cars. Clouds tumble overhead. Bitter winter wind blowing in from the water strikes the nape of Lucifer's neck, and he shudders. 

He _hates_ cold. 

And rain. 

And New York in general, save for its uniquely dense vortex of vice and culture.

Normally, he would leave. Exit this imperfect Hell to find Lilith waiting for him in the hall, wanting, as always, to know what's so special about this bloody place.

What _is_ special?

In this cell, the Steinway Factory is there and gone in moments—a flash on the edge of the inhabitant's elaborate self-punishment parade. Other Hells have pianos that stick around long enough for him to play a full concert. The entire _Opus Clavicembalisticum_ , if he desired. About forty doors down, Mozart himself resides, writing unfinished out-of-tune concertos and sonatas for the rest of eternity. Not that Mozart's tiny, bright-sounding fortepiano from the 1700s compares to the beautiful modern bombast of the Steinway Model D. 

Lucifer sighs.

At the far end of the street, the foreman who will soon be murdering his husband strides away, gabbing heatedly into a cellular phone—the old flip kind that can barely write text messages let alone surf the Internet. A yellow cab swishes by. Seagulls cackle overhead. The air smells of fish, urine, and pretzels. 

_You always come here,_ he hears Lilith asking him. Again and again. _Why?_

Why?

She's asked him countless times, and yet … it occurs to him he's never once asked himself.

"You, there!" he shouts, cupping his hands around his lips to boost his voice. "You, on the sidewalk in the discount trench coat! What's so bloody special about _you_?"

The foreman is so intent on his conversation he doesn't seem to hear. Burrowing his mouth and nose deeper into the thick wooly spirals of his scarf, he passes the park and turns the corner, heading northeast, without once looking back.

Lucifer rushes to catch up before the loop sends him "out of frame" again.

"You!" he calls, taking ground-eating strides. "You, there! Mr. Murderer, sir! I demand you hang up your phone and speak with me at once."

The foreman only hunkers down, squaring his massive shoulders, and walks faster. 

"You!" Lucifer repeats. "I'm bloody well talking to you!"

Heads turn, but not the foreman's. 

Lucifer frowns. "Hello? Are you deaf?" 

At which point the foreman halts and wheels around. "Yo, asshole. I'm talkin' here! Stop followin' me, will ya? Christ." And then he continues walking.

"How … _dare_ you," Lucifer splutters, trotting after the man. "Have you _any_ idea who I am?"

"Yeah," says the foreman into the phone, not looking up. "Yeah, yeah. Some asshole keeps yellin' at me. Look, I'll be home soon; I promise." A pause. "I'm _sorry,_ okay? I'm walkin' as fast as I can." He puts his shoulder forward like he thinks he's a linebacker, and barrels into the frigid breeze, his pace picking up. "I said I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_. I gotta go. Sorry." The guy on the other end of the line is still screaming as the foreman claps the clamshell closed. 

"Will you bloody well _stop_!" Lucifer snaps, injecting Word. But Word is hit or miss with humans, and this human seems determined to let Lucifer's intrusion pass like a bad plate of shrimp. 

Lucifer zips forward, grabbing a fistful of the man's—"Stop houndin' me!" the man cries, his knuckles crashing into Lucifer's nose and jaw. A wet, visceral _crunch_ follows. The man screams and sinks to his knees, clutching his ruined hand.

"Yes, hello," Lucifer replies with one peaked eyebrow as he brushes imaginary dust off his sleeve, "I'm the bloody Devil, and you're in Hell. You can't possibly expect to overpower me, can you? Or is an imbecilic level of bravado why you're here? Beyond the whole you're-a-murderer sitch, that is."

"Fuck you, asshole!" the foreman yells, moaning. "Ya broke my hand. Ya broke my _hand_!"

"No, Mr. Murderer, sir, _you_ broke _your_ hand on _my_ face. Which, frankly, was quite rude, and if anyone should be yelling obscenities, it's me, because you keep taking my favorite piano away when you pop off to strangle your spouse. Apparently, music isn't part of your guilt maze, or some such. Which is really rather counterintuitive, considering you make Steinways for a bloody living."

"Fuck you! Why is everybody houndin' me?"

"I don't suppose this Hell loop has 911?" Lucifer shoves the man onto his back, rifling through his pockets for the cellphone. "I'm really not interested in waiting for this dearth of pianos to wind around again, and it's not as though I can pluck a feather and heal a figment of your imagination." 

"What the hell are ya talkin' about?" the man wails.

"You really think a gelatinous blob of formerly human light can break a hand? You've no hand to break!"

"… What?"

Lucifer slumps. "Oh, bother."

* * *

This Hell loop does have 911 service. Unfortunately, though, emergency service in Hell is hellish. The cellphone signal drops three times, preventing dispatch from locating them no matter how clearly Lucifer enunciates through clenched teeth, "In Astoria, next to the park nearest the bloody Steinway factory. On … on 20th Ave. Hello?" 

The EMTs take so long to arrive that anyone not already dead in a Hell loop _would_ be dead in a Hell loop, if Hell time were equivalent to Earth's. The ambulance carts them to the hospital in bumper-to-bumper traffic that won't budge for a siren no matter how insistent the sound. 

"Typical New York!" Lucifer grumbles, all while Mr. Murderer continues to scream and wail and cry because they won't give him any painkillers, despite imaginary broken hands being quite imaginarily painful. 

When they arrive at the hospital, the EMTs dump Mr. Murderer into the waiting room with the hypochondriacs and flu victims and crying babies, where the intake nurse is literally asleep at the desk. The only reason Mr. Murderer even gets an uncomfortable chair to snivel in is Lucifer, who scares the other figments away with a red-eyed glare. 

They sit in the corner, separated by an end table, where a pile of decades-old magazines rest, wrinkled, ripped, defaced with pens. Mr. Murderer's eyes are glassy with pain. Sweat plasters his hair to his forehead. He clutches his trembling fist to his abdomen, burying it in the billows of his coat.

"Tell me, what is your name?" Lucifer says.

"Hmm?"

Wincing as a shrieking baby reaches a pitch only cetaceans should achieve, he says, "Well, you can't be Mr. Murderer, can you? Or perhaps you can? There's a mother two doors down from you who named her children Han and Leia. Quite unfortunate in terms of taste _and_ meta, though I'm not certain that's what sent her to Hell."

Mr. Murderer squints at him. "Ya talk a lot, man." His tone is reedy. 

"I've had no other opportunity to talk, lately," Lucifer replies, irritated with himself when his voice catches. "Not with anyone who'd understand."

"Man, _I_ don't understand."

"What's difficult to comprehend about me asking your name?"

Mr. Murderer drags his unbroken hand to his face to rub the bridge of his nose. "Dennis," he croaks against his palm. "Dennis Lawson."

Lucifer can't stop the brief bark of laughter that flies loose from his lips. "Oh, dearie me, the irony. Mr. _Law_ son."

"Well, who the hell are _you?_ "

"I told you, Mr. Lawson; I am the Devil. Lucifer Morningstar, to be precise, though I'll happily answer to Old Scratch, if you prefer. I like that one in particular."

Mr. Lawson laughs tiredly. "Sure, man. Whatever." The cellphone in his pocket rings again. He denies the call, his shoulders curling inward, his eyes widening with a tinge of panic.

"You seem quite popular today," Lucifer hazards, nodding at the phone.

"My husband," Mr. Lawson replies.

"You don't wish to take his calls?"

Mr. Lawson looks away, toward a sniffling flu victim. "Nah."

"Is your refusal to speak with him related to your imminent murder plans?"

" _What?_ "

"Murder," Lucifer enunciates. "Why will you murder your husband when you return home?"

"I'm not murdering anyone!" snaps Mr. Lawson. "Are you _crazy_?"

"No, only damned. Devil, remember?" 

"Can ya please leave me alone?" the man says weakly.

"I could, but I won't." Lucifer leans back, stretching his long arms and legs. These waiting room chairs aren't meant for tall people. "If you've no plans to murder anyone, why does this loop always reset an hour after you leave the Steinway Factory?" Lucifer glances at the clock on the wall, but the minute hand hasn't moved in eternity. "We're overdue, actually. Has punching me diverted you?" 

"Will ya, please, stop talkin'?" Mr. Lawson begs, trembling. "Please."

"I suppose," Lucifer says, folding his arms. "Bonus points for begging the Devil in Hell, of course. Credit where it's due."

"God, you're weird."

"I am not God."

"Satan. Whatever, man."

Lucifer would wonder whether this Lawson fellow was getting Hell cred for an accident, if it weren't for the whole strangulation bit. Hard to accidentally strangle someone with a phone cord, of all things. Hard to accidentally strangle someone at all, really. Even as a crime of passion, passions tend to cool when a body isn't moving anymore, and passing from unconsciousness to death can take a strangled human more than a minute.

"A conundrum, indeed," Lucifer muses.

"Huh?"

Lucifer gives Mr. Lawson a dismissive wave. "Never you mind. Pretend as though I'm not here."

Mr. Lawson seems happy to oblige.

* * *

Time passes at a slow crawl. The babies scream, and the sick people sniffle. Lucifer has the urge to squirm away and buy a bucket of Lysol to douse himself with. Not that Lysol's available anywhere. Or if it is, it's probably hellishly ineffective, serving only as a bacterial breeding ground.

"Mr. Murderer?" the nurse eventually calls. "We're ready for you."

"Well," Lucifer huffs, standing up, "it's about bloody time!" 

Mr. Lawson had nodded off at some point, his pulverized fist still clutched within his coat. Lucifer nudges the tip of his shoe against Mr. Lawson's shin. "Come, come, man. They'll fix your imaginary hand, perhaps." 

Blinking woozily, Mr. Lawson wobbles to his feet, only to suck in a breath when he reaches with his injured limb to steady himself. His eyes roll back and his body goes limp. 

"Bloody hell!" Lucifer snaps as the man crashes into him, a deadweight dragging his snotty-from-sniveling nose against Lucifer's tunic. "Medic?"

* * *

Lucifer begins to get the full picture when an orderly strips Mr. Lawson, replacing his coat, shirt, and slacks with a hospital gown. The flash of bare skin reveals a tapestry of bruises, old and new, across the man's torso. Yellowing fingerprints paint his left buttock. The worst telltale, though, mars his back—a healed burn shaped like a clothes iron. The scar is marbled and pink and puffed.

When the orderly steps out, Lucifer grabs the too thick case folder. Doctors' notes stuff the file to the gill slits, scrawled across page after page. Mr. Lawson is no stranger to this emergency room. He's even been treated for a broken hand before, along with broken ribs and a wrist.

"Is this why you're bloody here?" Lucifer asks, tossing the folder away, where it slaps the curtain aside and flies into the bay, almost hitting the figment of a nurse. "Because you finally snapped and killed the person who hurts you?"

Mr. Lawson's eyelids flutter.

"Answer me, Mr. Lawson," Lucifer says, gripping the gurney's railing hard enough to bend it. The metal shrieks in protest. "Mr. Lawson, wake _up._ " 

"I shouldn't have," says Mr. Lawson softly. "I shouldn'a done it."

"In a Biblical, eye-for-an-eye sense, I'm inclined to disagree," Lucifer says, the corner of his lip twitching as he fights back a feral snarl. "I imagine you served prison time for this already, did you not?"

"Sometimes, I feel like it killed me."

"Given your current circumstances, I'm quite certain it did."

The man's lower lip trembles as he looks away. "I dunno whatcha mean."

"What does your husband do to you when you go home?" Lucifer presses. "What sets you off?"

Mr. Lawson's eyes are wet. "I don't wanna talk about it."

"But you wish to _bathe_ in it for eternity? How does this nightmare help _anyone_?"

"I really don't understand what you're sayin'." 

"I. Am. The _Devil_ , Mr. Lawson. You are _dead_. You are in _Hell_. And you are _punishing_ yourself. Over, and over, and over."

"Nah," Mr. Lawson says. "Nah, I'm not. That ain't true. My hand's just broken." 

Lucifer tilts his head. "Mr. Lawson, I assure you, I do not lie. None of this is real, and no one is keeping you here but _you_." He points toward the door. "You could leave this moment, if you wanted. You could—" 

" _No_!"

The loop resets like the snap release of a trebuchet. The sights and sounds and smells of the hospital ricochet away, propelled through the air as a solid cannonball of denial. Mr. Lawson reimagines himself in his apartment, sitting at the center island in his kitchen, sipping a steaming cup of liquid guilt. He grips the cup with his now unbroken hand.

A figment of another man clad only in boxers stands by the stove, flipping a blueberry pancake with a spatula. "Ya can't leave," the figment is saying. "Denny, ya can't leave me. I love you. Please, I'll try counselin'. I'll try _anything_. But ya can't just _leave_. That last time was the last time. I _swear_."

Dennis closes his eyes, agonizing over his coffee cup before he says softly, "You're right. Maybe it'll be different this time."

Except this is Hell. 

There is no change in Hell.

And nothing is _ever_ different.

* * *

Rage condenses like a dying star in Lucifer's chest as he stalks back into the hallway. 

"You always come here," says Lilith. "Why?"

"Do not speak to me!" he snaps, unfurling his white wings in a great gust of acid wind. Bunching his quadriceps, he bursts into flight, the force of his departure knocking her on her ass behind him.

He watches, too satisfied, as she shrinks into a speck. Why he'd bothered to linger with Mr. Lawson, he'll never bloody know. Mr. Lawson would rather punish himself than do something productive. 

"Is this really your Plan?" Lucifer asks as he settles on the Greater Throne like a grumpy gargoyle. "Really?"

But, of course, no one answers, least of all Dad. 

Lucifer tries to think of the beach again. Tries to think of the moment she kissed him. But all that comes to mind is ash.

* * *

When he wakes, he feels worse, not better. 

He returns to the palace in a funk, landing on the balcony that faces Discord.

"My king," a familiar gravelly voice greets him before Lucifer has taken two steps. 

"What is it this time, Squee?" Lucifer says on the coattails of a sigh. 

The little demon genuflects. "I … am sorry, my king. But there has been another disturbance."

Lucifer closes his eyes. "More demonstrations, is it?"

"No, sire. Not that."

"Well, then? Do spit it out."

"It's," Squee replies, his tone strange, "in the throne room." 

"What is?" 

Stressed wheezing fills the quiet. Squee clutches at his coat, his fingers trembling as they gather up great ragged clumps of material. "We have never seen one before, my king. We don't know what it is."

Lucifer stomps past him, his footsteps echoing. Squee yelps, scrambling out of the way. Lucifer exits through his chambers, heading down the staircase to the foyer. He takes a right at the bottom landing, pushing through the massive metal doors into the throne room. 

Whispers and nervous chittering echo off the black stone. Dozens of scandalized gazes swivel toward him, all in questioning wonder.

"Well?" Lucifer snaps. "What the bloody hell is it?"

The crowd parts as the Red Sea for Moses, giving him the first glimpse. He blinks, slow and reptilian and calm, barely checking his reaction in time to keep his mouth closed. There, before his throne, in a warm bath of firelight, rests the nine-foot Steinway Model D concert grand in East Indian rosewood, gleaming and glossy, its perfect polish like a mirror. 

No one speaks as he steps closer to inspect it. No one speaks as he sits at the bench and lifts the key cover. No one speaks as he sweeps his fingers across the keyboard, performing a quick arpeggio in C-major as a test. 

The notes hit the quiet like bells, in perfect melodious tune.

Something expands in his chest, making him lighter. 

"Who put this here?" he says. 

But no one has an answer. 

He turns to the crowd. "Where did this come from?" 

Again, no answer. 

This makes no sense. And, yet ….

He plinks out a quick rendition of _Twinkle Twinkle,_ one of Mozart's more interesting variations, anyway. The piano has a complex tone and timbre that vibrates against his sternum at lower registers, yet several octaves higher still has the brightness of a rainbow. The notes stuff him with sound like his Words stuff the quaking hearts of demons. He has no room for anything but listening until he stops pressing keys. 

Soft wheezes fill the space behind his left shoulder. "What is it, my king?" 

"It's a piano, Squee," Lucifer says with a tickled laugh, one he's suddenly too effervescent to check, regardless of his potential audience. He plays an arpeggio before sinking into the brooding _Op. 33: No. 2 in C Major_ by Rachmaninoff. "And this … is music."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everybody who takes the time to comment—it makes my day :)
> 
> If anyone wants to hear the Rachmaninoff song in question, you can listen [here](https://open.spotify.com/track/1cqgQldZFW2Zx297W0UaIa?si=aIDIqVwyTQGbwqdNdVunvA).


	16. "recognize the penis"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up at midnight again. Who's surprised? Enjoy!

Things aren't quite back to "normal" the next day, not that she expects them to be. After the _My Little Pony_ marathon, Chloe and Trixie had gone to bed, leaving Lucifer half-dozing in the recliner. By the morning, though, he'd retreated into his room. He hadn't emerged until she'd told him through the thick door—no knocking, no implications of any kind—she'd be leaving soon with Trixie. 

He's subdued in the car. Bristly and not talkative. Trixie steadfastly says, "Goodbye, Lucifer! … Good _bye_ , Lucifer! … _Good_ —"

Until he rolls his eyes and lowers the window to say, "Yes, yes, goodbye, child. Now, off you pop."

Satisfied, Trixie runs off to join her friends, and Chloe pulls away from the curb. 

Lucifer brushes off his sleeves, resettling. Courtesy of Alessandro's delivery last night, along with an adjustment allowing Lucifer to wear clothes from the closet in _his_ room rather than hers, he dons a charcoal-colored suit, and a royal-purple shirt and pocket square. He picks at the pocket square, making sure it's straight.

"Beyond the obvious, you doing okay?" Chloe asks in the quiet.

"No, but I am _trying_ ," he grumbles as he gives up fussing with his ensemble. "Not much else I can bloody do." 

She thinks of how he'd been before this mess. A frenetic nexus of hedonistic hyperactivity. But, now, he's not just bound, his motion limited to a fifty-foot radius, he's bound by _her_ , a workaholic mom whose idea of a wild time involves wrapping herself in a snuggie with a good book and a glass of wine. And the book part is only a recent development.

"Lucifer, you know if there's anything you want—booze, a sex partner"—her face heats to molten—God, she hopes he doesn't want someone to bone, but—"a piano or something—you can ask me, yeah? Anything. I mean it. Even if you think I wouldn't approve. This is _beyond_ a weird situation. I promise I'll at least try."

"Having to ask you for those things rather defeats the point, no?" A foggy jag of condensation snakes along the window as he sighs. "I should think I'd feel more crushed than free."

"You're right. Sorry."

He turns to her with a piercing gaze. "I've no present desire for a sex partner beyond the options residing in this car."

Whoa. "Are you asking me if I'd—"

"No, Detective," he says evenly. "I am not _asking_ you. I'm simply stating."

"But—"

"The balcony, you'll recall, is only a few days past for me."

 _It was you, Chloe,_ he'd said. _It always has been._

The traffic lights in front of her disperse into an amorphous squiggle of red dots as her eyes lose focus. She grips the parking brake lever without pulling it upward, just to have something to do with her hand. What the hell does she say, given current constraints _?_

"I understand you're displeased with me," he continues. "For you, time has passed, and you're in a different place."

"No, I'm not," she says softly.

"You're … not?"

"I mean, _yeah_ , I'm mad about some stuff—no, that's not a command for you to fix it. And, yeah, some time has passed. But, Lucifer … I'm not in a different place." Her fingers hurt, she's gripping the brake so hard. "I _love_ you. Of course I want you." 

"Tell-me-not-right-now," he blurts, turning five words into one.

"Huh?"

"Red. _Red_ , Detect—"

" _Obviously,_ I don't want you right now!" she snaps.

He sags against the sidewall, his tension releasing into ragged panting, and a groaned, unhappy, "Oh, bloody hell."

The light turns green, and she jams on the accelerator hard enough to make the car buck and peel out. "This stupid"—her stomach churns with a sudden flash of nausea—"endous … _stupendous amazing_ compulsion! I want to have sex with you _after_ we've worked out our stuff, and you're free—not _rape_ you. _Gross_."

"Yes, your point comes across quite well now," he says with a reedy voice. "Thank you." 

God, damn it. God, _damn_ it. 

Lucifer pulls his trembling fingers through his hair, offering her a lopsided, watery smile despite his awful pallor, which is a mix of bloodless pale and the flush of forced-but-fading arousal. "But … you desire to shag me eventually?"

Of course that's his takeaway. "Yes, Lucifer."

"You desire to … 'work this out?'" 

" _Yes_ ," she repeats, trying not to sound churlish. For the compulsion's benefit, she adds, "Not right this second, but, yeah."

"I … suppose it's quite difficult to work out 'our stuff,'" he says, "when you can't express your desires without consequence."

"No fucking kidding." 

Blasting through an intersection as a yellow light flicks to red, she half expects him to comment on her reckless driving. If nothing else, to encourage her. But he doesn't. Even when she screeches to a halt at the next light—which is unequivocally the color of her frustration—he holds his tongue. Even as inertia flops him forward two inches, locking the seatbelt, and then re-pastes him to his seat. Instead, he regards her, calculating.

"What?" she says tiredly.

"What, what?"

"I can feel you _staring_ at me."

"Well, I quite like the view."

The light turns, the rumble of exhaust punctuating the quiet. 

"You could pretend there aren't any consequences right now," he says softly. "You've my consent."

She glances at him. "I can't do that."

"Of course you can, Detective."

"I can't just …." She sniffs. "I can't just whine about things. Not when I know it's going to hurt you." Not when her issues don't even hold a _candle_ to his. 

He takes a breath like he's preparing himself for an onslaught. "Whine away."

"But I _can't_."

"You desire someone to listen?" He gestures to himself. "Well, here I am, Detective. Listening."

"But—"

"I trust you'll ease me when you've finished."

He sounds so … earnest. 

"Do it," he urges. "Let it go."

She snorts as the famous chorus floods her head with an orchestra. Had that been on purpose? Lucifer had had ample opportunity over the years to pick up on some of Trixie's Disney-ish viewing material. She hadn't watched _Frozen_ since Lucifer had moved in, but—no. Since … the compulsion had _forced_ him to move in.

"It's not stupendous," Chloe admits in a rush as she pulls up to another light. "It's not spectacular. Or amazing. Or splendiferous. Or whatever the hell else I've used as a qualifier. This fucking compulsion is _awful_. And dehumanizing. And _evil_. And—"

If it weren't for the fact that his slow, dragging breaths seem forced, somehow, she wouldn't know he's under duress. "Please, continue," he says like nothing is wrong. Like it's any other Wednesday in the daily grind. 

"Lucifer, I can't. I just … this is …."

" _Please,_ Detective, allow me to do _something_ of my own choosing. Allow me to assist you, not because I was forced, but because I desire it."

"But—"

" _Let it go_." 

"I hate it! I _hate_ it, Lucifer."

"Yes, good," he gushes, nodding enthusiastically. "What do you hate?"

"I hate that I can't tell you when I'm mad or hungry or tired or just done with it all. I hate that anytime I stop paying attention to what I'm saying, you seem to get punished for it. I hate that I can't even tell you I love you or that this sucks or that royal purple is the best color on you without wondering if I'm forcing you to feel what I feel." 

"Do tell, Detective," he prods almost gleefully.

"I hate that I can't say I want you without this compulsion jumping to, hey, let's have some rape! Rape would be romantic! Seriously, what the _fuck?_ " 

"My thoughts exactly!" he chimes in.

"I hate that you're trapped. I hate that you're suffering. I hate that this compulsion is designed to make you pine for me. I hate that something so horrible happened to you you've probably just … blocked it out like it didn't happen at all. I don't know how to deal with that or help you, and that scares the fuck out of me. I'm terrified, and I'm exhausted, and I'm stressed by this mess, and by ghosts—sorry, de-gloved _souls—_ and by not knowing anything about why you're here, or what Lilith's planning, or whether possessed humans are gonna leap out of the woodwork to kill me or you at any moment. We're _blind,_ which just makes me want to pull close to you, except I _can't_ , for all the reasons stated above. I've missed you, and I've been lonely, and I hate that you just left. I hate that you're gonna leave _again_ as soon as you're released from whatever the fuck this is, no matter what I say or do, assuming you let me say anything at all, which you won't, because you're _you,_ and you just … _leave_. All the time, Lucifer, that's what you do. You fucking _leave me_ , and I don't get a say, and I hate it. And I hate that knowing you _can't_ leave me right now makes me feel _better_. What kind of fucking person does that make me? I _hate_ it, Lucifer! I hate all of this!"

And then she yells.

Primal, unleashed. 

No words, just a banshee cry.

Like a volcano, erupting after an eon of dormancy.

Until she's out of air and seeing funny black spots, and she can't breathe or think. She scrapes at the steering wheel with her fingernails, for lack of anything else to grab, and she screams again. When she croaks to a halt, she feels worse than when she started. Finally, let loose. Scattered. Undone. 

Like an open gash, bleeding.

"Oh," she gasps, suddenly sobbing. " _Oh_." 

The light turns green again. She pulls to the side, leaving the cruiser idling at the shoulder, cars whizzing by on the left. Her whole body is shaking when he leans across the car and gathers her into his arms like it's before. 

Before he left. 

He isn't the type to offer meaningless platitudes. He doesn't tell her everything will be okay. But just having him touch her is opulence in what had been a pauper's purgatory. 

"Oh, God," she warbles, and his embrace tightens. "I don't expect you to fix all that, obviously."

There is no telltale loosening of his posture, or a relieved exhalation ruffling her hair, and for a moment, she's left wondering if she successfully cancelled her wild ranting or not.

"Better now?" he prods gently.

"Not really." She sags against him, scrubbing at her reddened eyes with her knuckles. "I feel like I picked open a half-healed wound."

"Dr. Linda often tells me that's necessary."

Fuck necessary. She wants to crawl into a hole. Wants to command he not just never mind but _forget_ everything she said altogether. What an embarrassing bunch of half-cocked, emotionally compromised drivel—

"That's … really why you've been displeased with me? Why you think we're not a team," he says, rubbing her arm. "Because … I left without giving you …." He trails away, his chin dragging across her scalp as he shakes his head. "Because I've … acted unilaterally?"

She opens her mouth. Closes it. She'd … never put her percolating frustrations into words before. "Yeah, I guess so." She looks up at him. "You act like a king—which I suppose you are—but … I'm not your subject. I'm _supposed_ to be your best friend." Or more. Much more. "Or … God, I don't even know anymore." 

"I am no king with this curse in play." His tone is dark. 

"I know, but—"

"But … this is a new development. I've only been back a few days, and in your mind, I've an established pattern of behavior from … before."

"Yeah. Yeah, exactly."

He kisses the top of her head, the motion pensive. "Detective, I'd no idea you felt that way." She opens her mouth to respond, but he continues, "Or, well, I did. I did know. Honesty, after all. But I didn't _understand_."

"But … you do now?"

"Having no control over what happens to me—or around me—is … terrifying."

She tightens her grip on him. "I'm trying so hard to keep this from being scary for you. I'm trying _so_ hard _._ "

"I appreciate your efforts." He kisses her again, stroking her hair. "And I'm sorry I've ever made you feel anything like this."

"I wouldn't exactly compare it like _that._ " 

"I would." His fingers pause their toiling, and he clears his throat. "Detective, I shall … endeavor to improve."

She hopes so.

They share space in silence for a while, listening to the traffic pass. His embrace is calming. Reassuring. 

"This wasn't forced, right?" she has the wherewithal to ask, after far too long. "I didn't—"

"No, Detective," he murmurs. "You told me you wanted me to choose whether to comfort you more than you ever wanted comfort."

She pulls back to meet his eyes. "And you don't have to lie to me?"

He stares at her, unblinking, sincere. "No. You took care of that as well, remember?"

She searches his face for any scrap of falsehood, any kind of tell, but all she finds is truth. 

Searing, brilliant truth.

Her Lightbringer.

Sighing, she resettles, pressing her nose into his lapel. This morning, he'd used the Clive Christian No. 1, and she can't help but inhale the vanilla scent. "Thanks for …." She swallows. "Thanks. I know this was miserable for you on multiple levels."

"Think nothing of it."

A minute passes. When she drags herself away from him, her eyes ache like they're three sizes too big for their sockets, and her head hurts—her whole body throbs like she's getting over the flu. She wants to ooze back into bed and be a puddle of grief. With him. Not for sex. She'd settle for another hug, freely offered. His hugs are … perfect.

A soft groan fills the quiet—the first indication she's really done a number on him. He's folded his long body like an accordion, gripping the seatbelt like it's the only thing keeping him from bursting out of his skin. Almost like he itches, or … something. 

Definitely something, her inner voice supplies.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs.

"Nonsense," is his clipped reply. "I asked for it." 

She pulls back into traffic. 

"I don't suppose we could stop off to pick up some benzos on the way in?" he asks too airily. 

"Not coke?" she teases.

"As if a bloody stimulant would help me right now."

Which is when she realizes he isn't joking. His prior comments about wanting Linda's Xanax—about using drugs to relax—stick out like a sore thumb. "Wait, you really want Valium?"

"You did say if there was anything I—"

"I _know_ what I said, Lucifer."

His Adam's apple bulges as he flops his head backward against the seat cushion. "Forget I bloody asked."

"No, no," she says. At least, he doesn't have to worry about overdosing or chemical dependency. "If that's what you want, we'll get it." 

"Really," he scoffs, the word flat.

"Look, I understand you're not human, and our rules aren't one-size-fits-all with you. And I _did_ just wind you up like a jack-in-the-box."

He squirms a little, grimacing like an acerbic remark is hovering on the tip of his tongue. His cheeks and throat are flushed. His pants tent obscenely by the lap belt. _Speaking of jack-in-the-boxes, it would seem no 'pop goes the weasel for me_ , he'd probably joke if he were in a better mood. No wonder he wants a damned sedative. How maddening must this be?

"All I'd ask," she continues, "is that you keep it away from Trixie if you're gonna do it—I've got a lockbox in my bedroom for prescription meds. And don't operate machinery while you're stoned, obviously."

He laughs. "Really, that's your only bloody requirement? That I keep the pills away from your child and refrain from utilizing power tools whilst I'm baked?"

"Well, preferably, keep it away from _any_ child, but"—he's looking at her like she grew his fabled horns and declared herself Queen of Hell—"what?"

"I'm … surprised. That's all."

She shrugs. "Rules just aren't this black and white thing to me like they can be for you. I mean, yeah, I have my limits. But … this doesn't hit them."

"Rules aren't quite so black and white to me anymore, either, Detective," he admits. "You've shown me that."

Warmth fills her body. "We can't go now—we'll be late—but … after work? I'm assuming you've got a dealer who owes you a favor."

"Yes."

"Okay."

"Right, then."

In the ensuing silence, he diverts his attention. The locks on the car doors hop up and down as he fiddles with the master button. He plays with the sun visor, and then the window, and then the glove compartment. 

"Lucifer—"

"What if I asked to drive your police cruiser, instead?" he blurts. "Or … or play with the siren? _Anything_ halfway fun?"

She laughs. "No cruiser shenanigans, but only because they could get me fired."

"Ah, yes, they're quite picky about 'civilians' using equipment bought by taxpayers, aren't they."

"Sorry." She grins at him. "When we get home tonight, you can totally drive my personal car and pretend it's the cruiser? You could even make siren noises, if you want."

"Would you allow me to speed?"

"How much over?"

"Whatever fancies me in the moment?" he hazards.

"Nine over on an empty highway, five over in traffic: final offer."

He winks, the aroused flush on his face receding, replaced by simple joviality. "My, my, you rebel, you. Noted." 

The sudden lift in mood leaves her buzzed like she's had a few glasses of wine. "There's a jazz bar near the precinct," she finds herself saying. "They have a piano. We could go Friday night? Trixie is camping with Meghan this weekend, so I've already got childcare lined up."

"I'd quite enjoy that." 

"More than Valium?" she asks. "Or do you still want that, too?"

"The Doctor did say she preferred drugs as a last resort. I suppose I can try things her way for a little while." He peers at her with gleaming eyes. "Detective, are _you_ okay now?"

"No, but I'm trying, too. You're right. What else can we do?"

* * *

They stop in West Adams on the way to work. Chloe, Lucifer, and Ms. Cade—the woman who filed the noise complaint—stand in Ms. Cade's narrow driveway, boxed in by her little blue Jetta and her house's sun-damaged siding. Squinting, Chloe clutches her notepad against her brow to thwart the stabbing knives of morning sunshine, only for Lucifer to drift into the space behind Ms. Cade's shoulder, blocking the sun with his head. 

"Ms. Cade," Chloe says, mouthing a silent, _thank you,_ over the woman's shoulder to Lucifer, "can you describe the circumstances surrounding the noise complaint you lodged yesterday morning at approximately 4 a.m.?"

Bristling, Ms. Cade folds her arms. "Yeah. It was noisy, so I called." She twists her purse strings until the leather creaks with strain. "Look, I already told this story to three different—"

"I know, ma'am." Chloe nods, stepping closer, softening her voice. "I know this has to be frustrating having your morning hijacked again, and I apologize for any inconvenience. But someone died there"—she gestures with her uncapped pen to the house two doors down—"and I'm the lead detective on this case. If you're willing, I'd like to hear your recounting of events in your own words, please. It could help me gain a better sense of what happened."

The woman glowers. "Am I being detained?"

"No, ma'am," Chloe says, resisting the urge to sigh. "You're free to go to work, of course." She maintains eye contact, trying to will the woman to stay. "But it would be _really_ helpful if you talked to me. Please." 

Ms. Cade is built like an Amazon, her height much closer to Lucifer's than to Chloe's. Dirty blonde hair with dark roots frames the woman's face. Her ice-blue eyes are beautiful in sunlight. She regards them for a long moment, her lips contorting into a displeased grimace, but she doesn't stalk away like her body language suggests she wants to do.

"Come now, Ms. Cade," Lucifer scolds. "Play nice, and perhaps the Devil will offer a favor, should you have a reasonable request."

She gives Lucifer an irritated _are-you-for-real_ scowl, before turning back to Chloe. "Look, it was noisy," she huffs, "so, I called the police. Just like the sixty-three-million _other_ times I've called about that godforsaken blight of a property."

"Literally dadforsaken at the moment, it would seem," Lucifer adds.

"Huh?"

"Ma'am," Chloe interjects before Lucifer can hijack the conversation, "you've called about previous noise disturbances?"

"Yes," Ms. Cade enunciates like she thinks they're morons. "We _all_ have."

"You all, meaning your various neighbors?" 

"People are _always_ breaking in, doing God knows what."

"Banging, it would seem," says Lucifer. 

"What is _with_ you?" Ms. Cade asks.

" _Not_ banging, unfortunately. Even by myself."

Chloe resists the urge to laugh. Lucifer's off-the-wall comments derailing interviews are _not_ something she's missed. And, yet, nostalgia almost threatens to strangle her. She scrawls a reminder in her notepad to check on the other noise complaints for this address. "Ms. Cade, can you describe any of the people who've broken in?" 

"I don't know." Ms. Cade shrugs. "Just people."

"Vagrants?" Chloe prods. "Kids?"

"Beats me." 

_Eclectic break-ins_ , Chloe scribbles. "Was anyone hanging around the property in the past week?"

"Not a soul that I saw." 

"Obviously," Lucifer scoffs. "Humans cannot see souls, least of all this one."

Ms. Cade's brow furrows, question marks nearly exploding from her skull like confetti. "How long were you hearing noises before you called the police?" Chloe interjects before the woman can think too hard.

"No idea," she says. "Like twenty minutes? The noise woke me up, and then I couldn't get back to sleep—it was constant."

 _20 minutes noise_ , Chloe adds to her notes. "No other sounds? Just the banging?"

"Right," says Ms. Cade as Lucifer snickers.

"What time did the noise wake you?" Chloe asks.

"I remember seeing 3:47 on the clock, but I don't know if that was when I woke up."

 _3:47 a.m._ , Chloe writes. "Are you familiar with the homeowner?" 

"Not really," Ms. Cade replies. "He was some hoarder guy who never left his house. The family intervened a few years ago, threw out his crap, and got him some help, but for some fucking reason the county didn't think the property was damaged enough to warrant demolition—it got left here to rot like a carcass. Nobody's been back since."

"Okay." Chloe flips her steno pad closed, pocketing it before fishing out a business card. "Well, thank you for your time, Ms. Cade. If you can think of anything else—any detail, big or small—please, call."

Ms. Cade snatches the card. "Yeah, whatever. Don't 'visit' me again." She puts the word visit in air quotes.

And then she climbs into her car, slamming the door on them before Chloe or Lucifer can get a word in edgewise. She peels out of the driveway, blowing a gust of oily-smelling exhaust into their faces. 

" _Lovely_ individual, that one," Lucifer comments.

"Her behavior's not surprising, considering the state of that house and the continuing noise issues, dead guy or not. She must be running on fumes."

"I suppose."

Chloe glances at Ms. Cade's residence. It's a little one-story detached home like all the others on the street. No front yard to speak of. Un-raked leaves litter the sidewalk in small clumps—just a few from the deciduous trees mixed with the palms. A fall-colored flag hangs from the doorway, flapping softly in the breeze. 

"So," Lucifer says. "Paperwork, is it?"

"You know it," she replies. "Oh, and the sketch artist. For John Constantine. We never got around it because _ghosts_."

Really, her life's gotten strange.

* * *

She sets Lucifer up in the conference room with Stan Bigsby, the precinct's sketch artist, while she researches all the noise complaints made on the La Brea property. Ms. Cade and two other neighbors—the ones living closest to the murder scene—have all lodged roughly the same amount of complaints. A smattering of other neighbors have also chimed in. But nothing jumps out as unusual. No one person seems to have an axe to grind. 

Chloe pushes that investigative angle onto the back burner, to be revisited later, if they run out of hotter leads.

"Hello, familiar friend," Lucifer says an hour later, two large sheets of paper clutched in his hand. He exchanges his bounty for the Newton's Cradle on her desk. The endless clack-clack-clack starts moments later, much to his delight.

"Um," she says, examining the top sheet. The scowling stick figure with yellow triangles for hair seems a little amateurish for Stanley. "What's this?"

"Oh, that's my rendering," Lucifer says, glancing over. "Thought it might be useful."

"Lucifer, you've got a lot of talents," she tells him, fighting not to laugh, "but this is not one of them." 

"Not even an eye roll for my efforts?" he teases. 

To his delight, she appeases him with dramatic flair as she slides his "rendering" aside. 

Bigsby's drawing is far more functional. From the page, a brown-eyed man with an angular face stares back. John Constantine. He looks … kind of like he belongs on a beach with a surfboard, given his tanned complexion and scruffy sunbaked hair. 

"This guy is a magician?" she says doubtfully.

"A warlock, yes," Lucifer confirms. 

"What's the difference between a magician and a warlock?" 

"One is paid to pull rabbits from hats—the other to remove slavery curses and other nasty sundry." 

O … kay, then. 

Lucifer fiddles with her stapler while she calls the LAPD liaison at the FBI. 

"Hi," she says to the administrative assistant who answers, "my name is Detective Chloe Decker. I'm with the LAPD." She rattles off her badge number. "I'm calling to request help locating a person of interest, name: John Constantine. He may be a critical witness in a kidnapping case, and it's imperative that I be able to question him as soon as possible."

She's put on hold again, Muzak emitting from the phone speaker as Lucifer shifts his attention to her pencil cup. He peeks in her desk drawers, one, two, three, and dips his fingers into the open envelopes stacked in her inbox. Reading, inspecting, twiddling like he's the angelic embodiment of a fidget spinner. He's just … life. And movement. A chorus of idiosyncrasies to accompany her lonely bass line, and suddenly, her life is music again.

"You are _so_ hyperactive," she says idly.

"Is that a problem?" he says, frowning back at her.

"Nope. It's …." _Nice_ , she's not sure she can say. Not without sending him into pleasure paroxysms. It's nice— _you're_ nice—seems a bit too close to a Tony Tiger style, _Grrrrreat job, slave!_ She settles on something she knows is safe because she's already said it. A soft, "I've _really_ missed you, Lucifer."

A command of another kind, but one he's already obeying, and it slides off like water from a roof shingle.

He smiles before his attention drifts again to her Newton's Cradle. She watches him over the edge of her hand. Just … watches. He's so intent on the Cradle he doesn't seem to notice. Or he does. And he lets her observe without comment anyway.

After a few more click-click-clacks of the Cradle, she turns back to her computer, surreptitiously opening her Internet browser. A quick Google search later, she's ordering half-a-dozen bottles of the nicest single-malt scotch she can afford, to be delivered by Friday evening. The least she can do, really. 

The Muzak blasting her ear ceases with a click.

"Hello, Detective Decker?" says a baritone voice. "I'm Agent Adeboye. I'm told you have a slippery POI?"

"Yes, thank you," Chloe says, her chair creaking as she leans backward. "I have a sketch if you'd like me to fax it …." 

* * *

Agent Adeboye can't find anything immediately helpful in the databases he has access to, but he promises he'll get back to her. Ella finds Chloe and Lucifer around lunchtime, after Chloe gets off the phone, and Lucifer has graduated from fidgeting to helping. Sort of. 

He and Chloe need to have a conversation about acceptable illustrations of crime-scene layouts. Acceptable illustrations that do not include stick figures with Xs for eyes, an amorphous inked-in blob labeled EJECTED SOUL, or chat bubble descriptions that include, "Bugs and other distasteful sundry." 

"We IDed the victim as one Alastor Blackthorn, 43," Ella says, as she drops a giant folder marked PRELIMINARY onto Chloe's lap, and then sits against the edge of the desk. "Fingerprints and DNA were a match." She beams at Lucifer, her lips stretched to such a degree she almost seems like she's grimacing. "I'm so super stoked you're back! It's like … the gang is almost together again!" 

"You could say I'm 'so super stoked' as well," he replies.

" _Really_?" Ella gushes. 

"You think I returned to Hell because I enjoy it?" 

"To be honest, I've got no idea why you returned to Hell. I didn't even know England was a euphemism for Hell until last week."

"Merely trying to avert a potential apocalypse."

"Wait, what?"

Chloe clears her throat as she skims through the file. "Why were Blackthorn's fingerprints and DNA in the system? Do we know?"

"Apparently, he was involved in a freshman hazing event in the 90s that resulted in two deaths via hypothermia." Ella frowns. "Can we go back to the part about the apocalypse?"

"Involved, how?" Chloe asks.

"Alastor was the one who orchestrated the whole event," Ella replies. "Made everyone strip and sent them running into the snow. They were only required to stay outside for sixty minutes, but they were drunk as skunks, and it was dark. Two didn't come back—frat couldn't find 'em in time."

"Didn't they call the police for help?"

"Yeeeah," Ella says with a wince, "college kids who are still young enough to feel immortal, coupled with underage drinking, _and_ hazing? No, they didn't call for help. I imagine they didn't want to get in trouble." 

Lucifer scoffs. "Imbeciles." 

Ella peers dubiously at him.

"What?" he says. "I may not be a fan of pointless rules, but I'm not a fan of wanton disregard for reality, either." His eyes narrow. "Perhaps Mr. Blackthorn is Hell-bound, after all, given the manslaughter sitch. Though, that still doesn't explain Azrael's steadfast absence."

"Maybe the apocalypse does?" Ella says.

"No, no," Lucifer says with a dismissive wave, "the apocalypse I mentioned involved demons having free run of Earth, and I averted it by leaving." 

"Wait, was _that_ why we found a zillion dead guys at the Mayan right after you left for 'England?'" Ella almost squeals, her eyes widening like full moons. "Apocalypse-y stuff?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"No _way_!" 

" _So_ ," Chloe interjects pointedly, "we have a potential motive for revenge, given the hazing deaths. Anything else, Ella?"

"The victim had some kind of UV stamp on his hand." Ella shows them a picture of a triskelion, neon green and glowing in sharp relief against pale, dead skin. 

"Oh, that's for a club," Lucifer says after barely more than a glance. "Dominus."

"Dominus?" says Chloe.

Lucifer grins. "A fetish club, darling. One of the best in LA, actually. I'm quite partial to it." 

"How long does invisible ink last?"

"A week, if that," Ella says.

"Okay"—Chloe nods—"anything else?"

Ella takes a breath. "Well, I found … a lot of DNA at this crime scene. Like … a lot. At least twelve different samples were identified from PCR."

"DNA as in blood?"

"DNA as in … erm … emissions."

"Oh, emissions," Lucifer says, smirking slyly. "So, they _are_ all banging. Tell me more, Ms. Lopez."

"Both vaginal fluid and semen. Oh, and saliva. Some new. Some old. Some practically fossilized. I think we've found the local 'hangout' spot for horny teens. Which means the signs of forced entry at the house don't tell us much about the murder."

"Did any of the twelve samples you identified lead back to our database?" Chloe asks.

Ella shakes her head. 

"Any fluids on the victim?"

"Nope. No other signs of sexual assault, either."

"Do we know cause of death?" Chloe asks.

"Internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen, like I thought. Tox screen came back negative. This guy was strung up for hours and beaten, probably while he was conscious. He had a closed head injury, potentially unrelated. The murder weapon was most likely the metal rod we found lying at his feet." 

"A closed head injury?" Lucifer interjects.

"Hell of an egg on his head," Ella confirms. "No open wound—no blood—which is why I missed it onsite."

"So … a concussion?" says Chloe.

"Yep," replies Ella. "Could have happened well before the murder—it wouldn't have killed him."

"But it would perhaps explain how he was overpowered and strung up," Lucifer muses.

"True."

"Any fingerprints on the murder weapon?" Chloe asks.

"Yep!" Ella chirps. "None were a match for anything in our system, but I got perfect prints of all five fingers and even some of the palm—killer had a good grip. We also found matching prints on the metal restraints, the collar, and the … um. The um." She takes the case folder back from Chloe, flipping to the photos section and pulling a few from the stack. "Well, this thing."

Lucifer leans over Chloe's shoulder to peer at the pictures of Mr. Blackthorn's genitalia. Specifically, of the metal band that had been found wrapped around the base of his penis. The final picture, taken at the morgue by the medical examiner, shows what the band looks like when removed. A tiny padlock had been concealed behind Mr. Blackthorn's penis. Without the padlock holding the device shut, it opens like a clam. A painful, toothy, bitey clam.

"It's a chastity device," Lucifer says. "This one is known as Kali's Teeth, because of the spikes lining the—"

"Yeah!" Ella interjects. "Yeah, what he said."

Chloe cringes. "Do I even want to know?"

"This device—the Kali's Teeth," Lucifer says, "is more about punishing arousal than preventing stimulation or barring the wearer from penetrative sex, as most chastity cages are intended."

"Why would people …?"

"Why, Detective, because it's _fun_ , of course. Why does anyone do anything?"

"But—"

"Admittedly," Lucifer concedes, nodding at the photo, "perhaps not fun in the particular situation our victim found himself in." 

Chloe gapes at him. "You seriously like this stuff?"

"Not Kali's Teeth, no," he admits with a shrug. "I'm no masochist, not to any degree. But I'm all for the sense of anticipation a regular cage can bring. Delay and denial can be _delicious_ "—he runs his tongue along his teeth, taking a bite out of the word like the taste makes it autological—"when used properly." 

Which … does nothing to stop the naughty, porny, ridiculous picture forming in her head, of Lucifer, naked save for a non-spiked version of the little metal band and padlock. He sprawls against her desk, saying words like delicious and Detective and— 

"Right," she blurts, nodding vigorously. "Right, sure. Okay." 

He steps around Chloe, picking up the stack of pictures. He flips to a closeup shot, presumably from right before the medical examiner removed the device, and pulls the picture toward his nose. "Oh, hello. I recognize this."

"You recognize the penis?" squeaks Ella. 

" _No_ ," he says slowly, rolling his eyes, "I recognize the cage _around_ the penis."

"But we already catalogued—"

"No, I mean I recognize the workmanship." He puts the photo on the desk, gesturing at a tiny imprint in the metal near the padlock. "This mark here." 

Ella and Chloe exchange a look.

"Oh, you _woefully_ sheltered …." With a dramatic, exasperated sigh, he spreads his hands in a sweeping gesture. "I _mean_ , we may be able to determine who bought this device for use on Mr. Blackthorn, because I know who forged and sold it?"

"Wait," Chloe says. "That device is custom?" They make custom chastity cages? That's a thing?

"Yes," Lucifer says. "The mass-manufactured ones are as easy to escape from as a child's poorly tied shoelace, in most cases. Believe me, I know."

"We do believe you," says Chloe faintly.

"Totes," adds Ella.

"Anyway," Lucifer continues, "some individuals prefer—or need—an actual challenge."

Chloe files that away, trying to ignore the Lucifer sprawled in her mind's eye as he shifts his busybody fingers from her Newton's Cradle to working his way out of the cage. She violently clears her throat. "What about time of death, Ella?"

"Still inconclusive," Ella replies. "The cold conditions make it hard to tell. Weirdly enough, that insane rot smell didn't follow the corpse to the morgue, though, so—"

"Yes, because the stench was the soul, not the body," Lucifer says.

"Souls smell like dead bodies?"

"How many times must I tell you, souls are not meant for this plane, not without an appropriate container. To your un-evolved noses, yes, that might have smelled like 'rot,' but I assure you, all I smelled was an affront to nature as Dad defined it."

"Real rot smells different?"

"Rot is rot." Lucifer wrinkles his nose. "It's a natural process, if noisome."

"And that's why the crime scene reeked?" Ella says. "Worse than anything I've ever smelled at any crime scene anywhere?"

"Now, you're getting it, Ms. Lopez."

"How long before the banging starts?" Chloe asks.

"De _tec_ tive!" Lucifer gasps, giving her a faux-scandalized look.

"Yeah, yeah," she says in good humor, waiting for his litany of Devilish innuendo, "get it out of your system already, if you want." 

But then he darkens. "Believe me, I'd love to."

"What does that mean?"

"Bloody," he grumbles, trailing away. "Never mind." 

Ella coughs. "So … um … we were talking about de-gloved souls?"

Lucifer sighs. "Yes, death is a bit like whiplash, even for those ready to go. Until Azrael picks them up, they usually simply … sit there."

"Like, they're stunned?"

"Yes. And they definitely don't stink immediately."

"So, what kind of time-of-death window are we looking at, then?" says Ella. "Like … gimme a ballpark here."

"I would assume Mr. Blackthorn died during the night," Lucifer says, "but I'm only speculating. I've never seen this happen before." 

"Well, that's … worrying."

"I quite agree, Ms. Lopez."

"I'm sure Rae-Rae is just jammed up?" 

"One can only hope." 

Ella looks back and forth between Chloe and Lucifer, her gaze ticking rapidly left to right and left again. "I'll keep praying."

"As I have been," Lucifer replies. 

Chloe writes Mr. Blackthorn's last known address onto a sticky note. Azrael's absence might be way above Chloe's pay grade, but even without an exact time of death, between disgruntled neighbors, a potential revenge motive, an ID for the victim, and … and a custom cock cage manufacturer, they have plenty of leads to explore. 

"Where did you find the info on the freshman hazings?" Chloe asks.

"I printed the relevant stuff for you," Ella says. "It's in the folder with the rest of the paperwork."

"Thanks."

Sure enough, the crime report and newspaper article rest at the top of the stack. The printouts are streaky—the pictures in particular are a mess—but the text is easy enough to read. The incident had occurred at Virginia Tech in 1998. Alastor Blackthorn had been the instigator of the hazings, but according to the article, had not been prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter in the aftermath, only furnishing alcohol to a minor. Which seems unfathomable, given two deaths were involved, but Chloe's seen things like this happen before, occasionally. 

A sympathetic prosecutor goes a long way. A sympathetic prosecutor in a rural area whose commerce is predicated on the existence of the local university—a university supplying two-thirds of the town's population when school is in session—a university that would very much want to keep an incident like this hush hush? That goes an even longer way. It's heartbreaking, but feasible. The news article mentions civil proceedings will follow. But no amount of money can bring back a loved one.

A crime that wasn't properly punished seems like a glaring motive, but … twenty years later? Who waits for two decades to commit a revenge killing? 

"Anything grab you in here?" Chloe asks.

"Not really," replies Lucifer, skimming the article over her shoulder.

"I'll dump this with Derek, then." Derek Costa is one of the investigative assistants assigned to Robbery and Homicide. "Maybe he can figure out where the surviving family members of the hazing victims live." If any of them reside in Los Angeles, that's at least potentialopportunity for murder—a hell of a stretch, but, still, potential.

She grabs her coat. 

"In the meantime, ready to go? I wanna get cracking on this."

Lucifer grins. "Detective, I thought you'd never ask."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everybody who takes the time to leave feedback. I really appreciate it!


	17. "kinkquiries"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all. I'm going on a bit of an impromptu and much needed vacation next week to visit family. If I have an intersection of spoons and time I will certainly still try to post, but I don't want to promise anything. Affected posting dates are: 10/11, 10/14, 10/18. For sure, I will be back on 10/21.

According to his driver's license, Alastor Blackthorn also lived in West Adams, but several miles from the crime scene, near USC—the University of Southern California. Unlike the detached "haunted" house on South La Brea, Blackthorn's home is an apartment. Lucifer doesn't need to offer a sultry smile, let alone a Devil's favor, to get them inside. Once Chloe shows the superintendent her badge, along with one of the less graphic photos of the corpse as proof of death, the super checks the lease to make sure Alastor is the only lessee, and then lets them in without a fuss. 

"Well, this is," Lucifer begins as he barges in front of her, over the threshold, only to stop short a stride later, "Spartan?" 

She inches around him to get a look, letting the door creak shut behind them. "Huh. Yeah."

Spartan is one word for it. 

A sofa and small recliner sit on perpendicular sides of a glass coffee table, all framed by the barred box of afternoon sunlight streaming through the window. An elegant floor lamp rests in the corner. On the coffee table, sits a basket filled with pale-colored stones. 

The area next to the kitchen contains a dinette set with four chairs and four white placemats. A grease-stained pizza box containing a lone shriveled pepperoni serves as centerpiece.

No paintings or framed photos adorn the walls. No telltale piles of magazines or mail rest on the dining table, or on the narrow chest-high divider between the living room and the kitchen. In fact, she can't see a knickknack or keepsake of any kind, anywhere. 

Between the absence of personal touches, the pristine beige carpet, and the almost luminous white walls, the apartment looks like a dwelling, but … not a home. It has the bare paint-by-numbers bones required to make the place look a) large, and b) inhabitable. But that's it. 

"It's like a realtor staged it or something," she decides, padding into the hallway. 

The first bedroom tells an even stranger story. 

It's empty.

Not empty of people; empty of _everything_. 

"Didn't the super say Blackthorn's leased here for six years?" Chloe asks. 

"Indeed," says Lucifer. 

She'd expected office stuff, at least. Or a den. A television. Anything?

The window shade looks strange. She grabs the pull cord, rolling it down a few inches. Dark vinyl unfurls—the kind that blocks rather than filters sunlight. A wild theory of porphyria flits through her head, quickly replaced by an even more outlandish and yet somehow more realistic thought.

"Vampires aren't a thing, are they?" she asks.

"Edward Cullen? Real? Goodness, no." Lucifer laughs. "On this Earth, there's nothing sapient but humans, the occasional angel, and one demon I'm aware of."

"And the not-ghosts."

"I wouldn't call an ejected soul sapient. Not here. Particularly not the one you've met."

"True." She scrunches her forehead, frowning. "Wait, what did you mean … on _this_ Earth?"

"Well, there are more, of course. Many, in fact."

She whirls on her feet to find Lucifer stretching upward. His fingers easily brush a thick metal loop that's bolted into the ceiling instead of a light fixture. When he notices her gaping at him, he beams. "You've no need to worry over it, darling. I like this one best."

"What are you _talking_ about?"

"The multiverse? Dad didn't write just one draft, you know. This universe is the final draft of many."

"How do I even unpack that?"

"As I said,"—he inclines his head—"you've no need to worry anyway."

"Is there more than one Hell? More than one you?" She blinks. "More than one _me_?"

"No," he says, raising his pointer finger, "Hell is the singular repository for everyone everywhere who is not Heaven-bound. It is, essentially, its own universe." Next to his index finger, he raises his middle finger. "With only one Heaven, one Hell, one God, and one Goddess—at least in this corner of reality—there is only one me. Only one of any angel, really." He raises his ring finger. " _Perhaps_ there is more than one you, given the existence of more than one Earth, but I've no way of knowing definitively without combing through the population of each. Which, while I've the lifespan for such an endeavor, you'd likely be dead from old age by the time I returned—fossilized, even—which would render the answer to your question moot."

" _What_?" she says, almost a gasp. "What, I …?" She latches onto the one thing he said that made any fucking sense. " _Perhaps_ there's more than one me? What does that even _mean_?"

"Perhaps not," he rushes to say. "In fact, given the circumstances of your conception, and there being only one me for my one dad to meddle with, I've always thought it's far more likely that you're"—he tilts his head, his eyes growing wet as he adds in a slightly choked tone—"well, that you are … unique."

"But what does that even—" Her brain might go nuclear if she keeps pressing. She takes a breath, inhaling until her lungs are filled to the painful brim. She counts internally to three before she exhales. "No."

"Detective," he says, shaking his head a little and correcting himself more softly to, "Chloe, I …." He steps closer, his shoulders straightening like he's steeling himself for massive blowback. " _Chloe_ , I promised you, always the truth—no more acting unilaterally—and this is—" 

She holds up a trembling hand. "Stop. Just stop. Please, stop." 

He shuts up. Immediately. 

"Is it crucial I know whatever this is _now_?"

"I," he answers warily, "don't believe so."

"But you made a previous decision not to tell me?"

"Yes."

"And it's something big?"

"Yes."

And isn't that just fucking ominous.

"Then maybe," she says as her spinning thoughts settle like dust. One good gust, and they'll whirl into a cloud of choking motes again. "Maybe we table this discussion for now, before I have some sort of existential crisis in our murder victim's not-a-den."

He opens his mouth. Closes it. 

"Sorry, I …." She shakes her head. "I shouldn't have even _tried_ to pry open that can of worms right now. But … but _later_. Later, when I'm prepped, and we don't have a billion other things to worry about, okay? Then you can tell me all about multiverses and other dimensions and why you think I'm probably unique."

"Very well," he chokes out like someone jabbed him with a hot poker. 

"I really appreciate you tried, though," she adds. "The … the endeavoring to improve. I can totally see it. Thank you." Credit where it's due.

He nods, saying nothing.

She frowns. "What's wrong?"

"Your questions are forcing me to reply again." 

"But that one's been bomb proof! Freedom-ish of speech has been _bomb_ proof!" 

He's silent, looking more panicked by the second.

"God, damn it," she snaps, pulling out her iPhone and navigating to her notes, only to realize with a sinking feeling that what she's searching for isn't there. "I … I don't remember what I told you that worked. I wasn't writing anything down yet when I gave you freedom-ish of speech." And she _really_ isn't in the mood to punish him repeatedly until she figures it out again. Not after the tantrum he'd encouraged that morning. "I can't do this right now. Lucifer, I just can't. I don't want to cause more pain today."

His eyebrows arch toward his hairline, like he's trying to prod her for something. Something ….

"You," she asks slowly, "remember what I said?" 

"Yes."

She resists the urge to huff at his compulsion-enforced brevity. "Well, tell me what I said, then."

Without hesitation, he regurgitates the command in monotone, in what feels—to her shoddy recollection, anyway—like perfect, word-for-word detail. She types everything into her notes app, thumbs flying over the keys. 

"Lucifer, I want you to be able to speak or not speak whenever you would choose to, and I always want that more than I want you to respond to my desire for knowledge, or my desire to hear you talk, or my desire to hear you say specific things," she tells him. After giving that a moment to settle, she adds, "Did that fix it?"

Pointedly, he doesn't reply. 

"Oh, good. _Good_."

"Yes," he agrees, looking relieved. "Quite."

"Do you have eidetic memory or something?"

"I remember everything with perfect clarity." A derisive laugh falls from his lips. "Makes this whole 'amnesia sitch' all the more confounding, no?"

More like it makes plausible the idea Lucifer serves as his own mental block. Because barring injury, how the hell else? 

"It's … definitely a puzzle," she decides, lying without a lie as she tries not to frown too intensely at him. Hopefully, Linda will have some wisdom and a diagnosis for them tonight. Chloe points at the metal loop that had interested him before they got sidetracked. "Any idea what that's for?"

"Hanging things, I suppose."

"Like what?" she says. "A big plant?" 

He gives her one of his patented _oh-you-precious-naive-thing_ looks over his shoulder, before padding soundlessly into the hall and veering around the corner. A scoffing noise erupts, then the sound of cabinets opening and closing. "Well, our victim _must_ be Hell-bound, Detective. He simply must."

"What? Why?" She chases after him, through the bare-except-for-the-table dining room area, into a similarly bare kitchen. One magnet for a Chinese place marks the fridge. 

Lucifer scowls as he gestures to the cabinet behind him. "Pray tell, what guiltless person stocks this many ramen packets, let alone to the exclusion of all else?"

"Um." Sure enough, several dozen ramen packets in varying flavors—beef, chicken, pork, seafood, etc.—stack the shelves top to bottom. "Like … every poor college student ever?"

Lucifer yanks open the freezer. A wince crunches up his features. "Frozen dinners? That's it? _Who is this man_? He doesn't even have salt. How does he cook?"

"I think he probably doesn't," Chloe says, inching toward the trashcan, which is full of ripe-smelling takeout containers and microwave trays in varying stages of decay. 

Lucifer opens the fridge. "Bloody hell, pickles, condiments, and _beer_?" He reaches inside. Bottles clink. "Bud Lite?" A disgusted noise fills the quiet. "Not even good beer." He closes the fridge, crossing his fingers in front of his chest as if to ward off evil. "Shameful. Just shameful, Detective. He _should_ feel guilty." 

"I mean, I kinda like Bud Lite," she admits, grinning at his scandalized expression.

"How … _dare_ you."

"It's just beer."

" _Just_ beer," he parrots, shaking his head. "When I've reassumed control of Lux, please, allow me to change your mind. Cocktails are more our jam, but we've at least _some_ local brews for you to try."

A hopeful lump forms in her throat, though she's afraid to ask, _When, not if?_

She discovers a box of plastic utensils in one drawer, along with a corkscrew, and a rusty, gunked-up can opener. That's it. 

The victim really seems more like a poor college student than a man in his forties. Maybe he's both. Which … possible? Or, maybe, he's poor from too much takeout.

The soft sound of Lucifer breathing by her ear interrupts her thoughts. The heat of his larger body presses close behind her. He rests his hands on her shoulders. Holy shit, is he _nuzzling—_

"Lucifer?" 

He freezes. "Yes?"

"What on earth are you doing?" 

He ruffles up like an irritated bird and steps away. "I … I … I wonder what our victim is hiding in his bedroom." 

"Lucifer, did I do somethi—"

But he's already gone.

Which … okay, then?

She walks into the bathroom, which shows more signs of use. The cabinets are fully stocked with shampoo, conditioner, soap, etc. She pulls a prescription bottle—paroxetine, often prescribed for depression—off the middle shelf of the medicine cabinet. The orange container jingles when she shakes it. The date on the label indicates Alastor had filled it last week. Maybe he'd been sick. Depressed. Suddenly, the empty apartment—the lack of real food—seems sad.

"Detective, you might wish to see this," Lucifer calls.

She follows his voice into the back bedroom, which also shows more signs of a life lived. Books cram the black shelving propped against the far wall. Black sheets and a fluffy down comforter form a mussed, rumpled pile at the foot of the king-sized bed. By the lamp on the nightstand, a gleaming iPad rests next to an alarm clock with bright red numerals. 

"Detective," Lucifer says. The wall on the left—a floor-to-ceiling mirror—is actually a sliding door that had concealed a closet. He clutches something black and leather in his hand. A long, spindly, flexible something about the width of his index finger, with a looped end. 

"What is that?" She squints. "Is that a riding crop?"

He smacks it against his palm. "Well, I believe it's for riding, Detective," he admits with a ghost of a smirk, "but not a horse." 

He gestures with the crop at a box stored on a shelf inside the closet. A ball gag rests on top. Below that, more leather. And rubber. And latex. And metal. Paddles. Restraints. Buckles. Rings. Other things she doesn't know enough about to recognize beyond knowing—based on Lucifer's half-gleeful half … concerned? expression—that they're probably not used for anything g-rated or vanilla. 

Most glaring isn't the makeshift "toy" box at all, but a vast array of buckled collars in various colors and prints and materials, all displayed on a rack like a tie collection. She pushes past Lucifer, frowning at a purple nylon dog collar with a dangling metal tag in the shape of a bone. The tag is labeled PUPPY. Just like the murder scene.

"Why are you making that face?" she asks.

Lucifer frowns at her. "What face?"

She splays her fingers, gesturing at him. "You seem … conflicted?"

His frown deepens.

"You can't possibly be shocked this guy likes bondage stuff …."

"Of course not," he says primly. "His choice in genital attire made that plain."

An awful thought occurs to her. 

"Lucifer, you don't think there's any chance our 'murder' could have been an accident, do you? Consensual play gone wrong?" 

"No."

"No?"

She gets another _oh-you-precious-thing_ look for her trouble. "Detective, anyone who's into scenes—"

"Scenes?"

"Yes, scenes," he says with a slow nod. "Fantasies acted out in a safe consensual space. BDSM. Anything done in a scene is discussed in minute detail beforehand, so all participants know what to expect and what's expected of them. Anyone who's into scenes would tell you metal restraints aren't used for weight bearing due to their propensity for causing nerve damage. Anyonewho's into scenes would also tell you beating a submissive with a metal cane is certain to cause internal injury—it's simply not done. Not to mention a man has died, which indicates a safe word was not used, not heard, ignored, or all three, and that is _not_ consensual play."

"But … maybe Alastor didn't know that stuff. How does what you said preclude an accident?"

Lucifer rifles through the toy box, inspecting every item with discerning eyes. "None of these items is dangerous when used properly."

"Unlike the metal cane and restraints."

"Correct." He picks up what looks like a flat half-yoke … thing—like for a tiny ox?—made of an opaque, shiny material. "Many of these are not what I would call props for dabblers."

"Do I want to know?"

"Oh, this is a humbler, darling," Lucifer mentions nonchalantly, offering a glance toward the yoke thing before he puts it back. "Beginners tend to stick to gags and paddles and simple things." 

"O … kay." She'd rather not know how a humbler humbles. "And the humbler thing isn't beginner."

"I wouldn't call it that, no."

"And that tells you?"

"Our victim was experienced, and he probably participated in the fetish community. He would have known about safe practices—they don't suffer fools—and he would not have consented to what killed him." 

"That's … a lot of conjecture," she decides. "What if he didn't participate in the community?"

"Detective, the community is the low-hanging fruit in this equation. A locally available repository of more-the-merrier fetishists who will respond to unusual inquiries—kinkquiries, if you will—without judgment, often even tantalized fervor and encouragement?"

"And it's really not possible the killer could have accidentally omitted important details when they were discussing the scene thing beforehand?" 

"Accidentally omitted?" Lucifer says. "No. A victim as experienced as this toy stash implies would have prodded for specifics."

"And that rules out criminal negligence on both ends, because a knowledgeable bdsm-ee—"

"Submissive," Lucifer interjects.

"A knowledgeable submissive would have been able to spot an unqualified … bdsm-er?"

"Dominant."

"An unqualified dominant, before play commenced, unless the dominant actively lied about what they intended to do."

"Precisely," Lucifer says with an impressed look. "Perhaps, our victim expected a specific scene—consented to it, even—and was preyed upon at his most vulnerable?"

"As in, he volunteered to be tied up, and then couldn't escape when he realized his companion wasn't playing by the rules you mentioned."

"There is, unfortunately, true evil in this world, Detective. People who wouldn't bat an eyelash at breaking a trust or causing pain for the joy of it. People without conscience to temper bald desire." 

"There is the concussion to consider," she muses. "Maybe he didn't volunteer for _anything_."

"Either way, this was not _play_ , Detective, inept or otherwise. I've no hesitation in labeling Mr. Blackthorn's death the result of torture."

She holds up her hands. "Okay. Okay, you're the expert." 

He raises an eyebrow at her. "My, how far we've come, that you can admit that of me with such brilliant flair for the blasé."

She snaps away from the closet like it burned her. "I really didn't mean that in a bad way."

"It's true, of course," he says with a shrug. "I am the Devil, after all." 

The Devil. Who'd just been put through the wringer himself, given the chains he'd showed up in, the tapestry of injuries he'd sported, and his probably dissociative amnesia. Her eyes prickle, and she blinks, swallowing as she forces herself back to the task at hand: solving a murder. 

She grabs the iPad from beside the bed. The device has no charge left. "We should drop this off with Ella when we get a chance." She rifles through the nightstand drawers, but aside from a huge box of condoms, two pairs of handcuffs, and some other "toys," there's nothing. "We need to talk to this guy's neighbors, too. And the super again. See if they've seen anything suspicious or can give us more context for this guy's life."

"Of course, Detective," Lucifer says smoothly. "Shall we, then?" 

* * *

The air reeks of fish as they step back into the long hallway.

"Uck," complains Lucifer. "This is why I live in palaces and penthouses." _When I've a choice_ , he leaves off, and he glances at her with a belated wince before rushing to add, "Though, your apartment is nice, of course, and I appreciate your hospitality."

"You have a palace?" she says, taking two steps across the hall to knock on the door of Alastor Blackthorn's nearest neighbor. 

"As you correctly surmised, I am the king of Hell," he says, leaning his long, besuited body against the wall beside the doorframe. "Where did you expect me to live?"

"I don't know. A hellish hovel?"

"No. Hell ruins everything in other ways."

Whoever lives across the way doesn't answer the door. Neither does the neighbor across to the right. Not at all surprising, given the time of day—it's a bit too early for people to be coming home from work or class if they have regular schedules. Alastor's immediate right-hand neighbor, though, answers after five knocks, a game controller clutched in her hand, an earmuff-style headset clinging to her neck. She's a thin brunette college-aged woman who doesn't seem interested in talking, but Lucifer softens her up with a quirked smile and an oozing bucket of charm. Instead of rolling her eyes, Chloe lets him work. She'd forgotten how handy he is at encouraging hostile witnesses to open up.

"He bikes somewhere almost every morning," the woman eventually says. "Even on weekends. Comes back in the dark."

"Recently?" Chloe prods.

"Not since last week."

"Do you know where he goes?"

"Nah. He really croaked?"

"Yes," Chloe says gently, "I'm very sorry."

"Huh. Shame." A tinny-sounding voice squawks from the earmuffs. The woman makes a face. "Can I go back to my game? We're getting creamed."

"No love lost, I see," responds Lucifer in a dry tone.

"Dude, I didn't know the guy. What do you want me to say?"

* * *

"Who?" says the left-hand neighbor.

Chloe concludes that interview quickly.

At their final stop, across to the left of Mr. Blackthorn's apartment, a beak-nosed twenty-something wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a prominent digital watch answers the door. He's a grad student, he tells them. USC. Mark Schofield. 

"Mr. Blackthorn?" he says. "Yeah, I saw him with a woman a few nights ago. What's this about?"

"Exactly how many nights?" Chloe asks.

Mr. Schofield rubs his clean-shaven chin, looking up at the ceiling like he's making calculations. "This weekend?"

"Could this have been Monday?" 

"I thought it was Friday, but … I guess so. Seriously, what is this about?" When Chloe explains, his slightly suspicious countenance melts away, replaced by parted lips and wide slate-colored eyes. "Oh, my God, he's _dead_?"

"Murdered, probably," interjects Lucifer in a bored tone.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Schofield," adds Chloe. "Did you know him well?" 

"A bit. Not much. We chat—chatted—sometimes, but it was just smalltalk." Mr. Schofield shifts, revealing his cluttered, dark apartment behind him. His muted television serves as the only light source. "He works on campus with the frats or something. I see—saw, I saw—him from time to time—we've bumped into each other before—but I'm not really into Greek stuff, so …." He expels a shaky, wet-sounding breath. "God, I can't believe he's dead."

"What did the woman look like?" Chloe says.

He fixates on his shoes and mumbles, "I … didn't get a good look at her."

"Oh, come now," Lucifer chides gently. "I know a lie when I hear it."

"I just … I just. Look, I was too busy staring at … at …." 

"At?" Chloe prods. 

"At"—the tips of Mr. Schofield's ears turn scarlet—" _fuck_."

Chloe steps closer, trying to make the interview seem more intimate. "Mr. Schofield, please. Anything you can tell us might help with our investigation."

He bites his lip.

"I promise you," adds Lucifer, "there is nothing on this Earth that will surprise me."

"Us," Chloe corrects. "Nothing that will surprise us."

Lucifer gives her a bit of an _oh, I bloody doubt that_ look, though he doesn't comment except to say, "Tell me, Markie Mark," as he stares intently. "Have you been a naughty boy?"

The guy recoils, making a face. "Look, I don't wanna talk about it."

Chloe sighs. "Lucifer—"

"Bloody hell, you can't be complicated as well," Lucifer protests. "Can you? The bloody receptionist at the imaging center filled my quota for at least a month!" 

"Dude, are you on drugs?" asks Mr. Schofield.

"Sadly, no! Are _you_?"

"Um. No."

"But humans simply aren't this resist—oh, bloody _hell_." Darkening, Lucifer turns to Chloe before gritting out, "Detective, shall I utilize my talents on this man, or not?"

"What does that mean?" asks Mr. Schofield.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She has control over this, too? That would certainly explain why Lucifer's attempt at dealmaking over the MRI hadn't had any weight to it, not that she'd noticed at the time. Fuck. She doesn't feel great about explicitly allowing Lucifer to grill this man. But … she'd feel worse telling Lucifer no—not when he can't not listen to her. 

She rubs the bridge of her nose, suddenly aching. She hates having this much power. Hates having to _decide_. "Go ahead." 

"With what?" says Mr. Schofield.

"I mean," she amends, thinking of the specificity required in the past, "Lucifer, please, use your desire thingy on Mr. Schofield." The words feel filthy in her mouth.

Immediately, the usual energy she associates with Lucifer's influence throbs in her chest like the beat of a drum from a distant subwoofer. She wonders how Lucifer's persuasion feels to people actually vulnerable to it—probably worse, like a chokehold on the heart. With a predatory grin and hypnotic gaze, he purrs, "Tell me, have you been a naughty boy, Markie, dear?"

"It's just … she was a total _freak_ ," Mr. Schofield gushes, a broken dam, and the unseen pressure eases. _"So_ much leather. And her boobs were just … I mean, they were _out there,_ man."

"Out there, like strange?" Chloe asks.

"No, I mean literally exposed to air. I can't even call what she was wearing a bustier. More like a hey-look-at-me-and-my-funbags window."

"And you liked looking, did you?" Lucifer needles. 

"Fuck, yeah. She was _hot_."

"Did anything else stand out?" Chloe prods, and Lucifer makes a muted snorting noise. 

"Eh, she looked the same as the others, to me."

"What others?"

"He had a parade of 'em. Every Friday." Mr. Schofield shifts to a conspiratorial tone, adding, "Or, I guess I should say they paraded him. He was into some weird shit."

"Weird, is it," Lucifer says flatly.

"Oh, yeah. Like I saw him on a leash, once. And he loved to wear dog collars, even out in public—he hid those under turtlenecks and things, though."

"Perhaps he collared more than just his neck."

"Huh?"

Lucifer regards the man like a cat regards a wounded canary. Like a toy. Nothing more or less. "Never you mind, Mr. Schofield," he says, waving the man onward. "Please, continue."

"It doesn't really matter, does it? Who am I to judge? We all got kinks, am I right?"

"And what are yours, Mr. Schofield?" Lucifer rests his forearm against the doorframe and leans close. "What do you _desire_?"

The unseen energy returns, a thick, heady pressure in her chest. 

"I like feet," the guy blurts as if he's been dying to confess.

"Who doesn't?" says Lucifer.

"Given the parade you mentioned," Chloe says, bulling back into the conversation, "it was probably Friday you saw this woman. Not Monday?"

The pressure disappears with a pop. Lucifer steps back. Mr. Schofield shakes his head, blinking as if to clear spider webs that have formed in his synapses. "Uh … maybe?" he says in a foggy tone. "I … really don't remember for sure."

"But the other women—all Friday."

"I think so."

"Too distracted by décolletages to know?" Lucifer snarks.

"What's that mean?"

Lucifer tilts his head. "Aren't you a bloody grad student?"

"Yeah, in _kinesiology_. Not English lit."

"The cleavage, man," Lucifer says impatiently. "Décolletage is cleavage. What cup size so enthralled you this time?"

"Lucifer," Chloe protests.

"Detective, it may be relevant for identification of our suspect."

Which … true. Fine. She backs off, redirecting a questioning look at Mr. Schofield. "Well?"

"I dunno cup sizes," replies Mr. Schofield. "Big?"

Lucifer presses a palm against his chest, slightly arching his knuckles over his pocket square. The guy shakes his head. Lucifer tries again, lifting his palm away from his suit a little. 

"Oh, no, more like …." Mr. Schofield demonstrates with splayed fingers forming mountainous peaks.

"And how tall was she?" Lucifer asks.

"Same as Al, but she was wearing stilettos." Mr. Schofield makes a measure, spreading his thumb and index finger about four inches apart. "Like that?"

Alastor had been about five-foot-eight. "So … she was five-foot-four-ish?" Chloe says, calculating.

"Right."

"Was she muscular?" Lucifer asks. "Doughy? Svelte?"

"Definitely svelte." The man's eyes turn briefly glassy as he dips into memory. A smile tugs at his lips. "Nothin' extra on that bod except those honkers."

"Sounds like a G or an H cup," Lucifer decides.

"I dunno if they were _that_ big," Mr. Schofield says. "That seems like a cartoon."

"Because you humans are bloody terrible at explaining bra sizes to each other. Really, on a petite woman, an H cup is not that—"

"And you remember nothing else about this woman?" Chloe says, trying to steer the conversation back to relevancy.

"She had a whip. Is that helpful?"

"A bull whip?" Lucifer says, raising his eyebrows. "Snake whip? Signal whip?"

"Like a _sex_ whip," Mr. Schofield replies. "You know, the ones with lots of little tails."

Lucifer rolls his eyes again. "A cat 'o nine tails, then. And that's a bloody _silly_ stereotype, I'll have you know. Mazikeen utilizes those all the bloody time for _real—_ "

Chloe clears her throat so loudly she scores the back of her esophagus. "Anything else, Mr. Schofield?" 

He shakes his head.

"Well," she continues, foisting her business card at him, "if you remember more details, please, don't hesitate to call. Thank you so much for your time."

* * *

Their last stop is the super's office, where they confirm on Mr. Blackthorn's lease application that he worked for USC. 

"We should go there tomorrow and ask around," she decides as they head back to the car.

"Very well," Lucifer says over her shoulder.

"Given the negative tox screen and the lack of defensive wounds on the victim, I'm thinking your consented-to-a-lie theory holds more water than anything else we've got. We should definitely pursue the manufacturer of the … the Collie's …?"

"Kali's Teeth."

"Right." 

Lucifer stalks behind her as she trots down the steps. A sinking thought occurs to her, and she halts on the landing, turning back to him. "Lucifer?"

He pauses on the step above her, making him impossibly tall. "Yes?"

"How does the true evil you mentioned get punished?"

"Hmm?"

"If humans send themselves to Hell with their own guilt, how do the people without consciences end up in Hell?"

"Ah," he says with a nod. "Raguel. My brother. The Angel of Justice. He works in conjunction with Azrael. They are both … essential for the correct functioning of divine justice in the afterlife. She is the ferry. He is the failsafe—the arbiter—if you will. He weighs every questionable soul she brings to him. Which assures souls harboring too little guilt for their atrocities don't end up in Heaven, and souls with too much guilt for their trifles don't go to Hell." 

"Oh. Well, that makes sense, I guess." As much as any of this, anyway. 

Between enslaved Devils, multiverses, Azrael as Charon, Raguel as Osiris, and Heaven and Hell as literal destinations, like Tahiti or Vegas, the loose dust settled in her mind threatens again to whirl into a tornado. 

"Detective?"

The spinning slows down. "I'll be fine. Just a lot to wrap my head around, yeah?" 

"I see."

"So what about people with medium guilt?" she continues.

He cocks his head. "Pardon?"

"What about people who aren't Hitler? There's no sliding scale? It's eternal damnation or bust?"

He offers her a Gallic shrug. "As I have said, none of the cells is locked. Anyone can leave whenever they like."

"But what does that matter if nobody realizes that's the case?"

"Humans do have a terrible time with guilt," he admits.

"Just humans, huh."

"Well, _I_ didn't bloody design the system." He glowers. "I frankly wanted nothing to do with it; I was conscripted."

"No, I … I know. Look, never mind. Forget I said anything. If you _want,_ I mean." Telegraphing her movement, she gives his forearm a gentle squeeze. "Let's go. I don't want to be late for Trixie." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everybody who takes the time to comment! I really appreciate it :)


	18. "CBT"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all! Vacation is going well. Time and spoons intersected today, _and_ I'm up late to boot. So, here, have a chapter?
> 
> TRIGGER INFO: Proceed with caution if sensitive to: humiliation, nonconsensual touching, nonconsensual body modification. (This is not the chapter I said would be marked with extensive warnings, but I've been perpetually on the fence about warning for this one since I wrote it, so I'm just being extra cautious here. This is the only chapter I feel this way about.)

The moment they're in the car again, and he has nothing else to focus on but _her_ —her smell; the soothing thrum of her heartbeat; the way her irises catch the setting sun like nets, turning green as a Scottish moor—he's acutely aware his groin and mind are a heavy nexus of disquiet.

The tsunamis of arousal crashing into him and then withdrawing without resolution have left him feeling like his skin doesn't fit, and he can't stop his bloody brain from ricocheting to carnal places. The Detective naked. The Detective naked by his bed. The Detective, naked by his bed as she ties him, also naked, to the bedposts. _I love you; I choose you_ , she murmurs against his ears. Over, and over, and, oh, how he delights. 

Not an unusual fantasy for him. 

But now the vivid images keep blooming like flowers in his mind even when he doesn't bloody want them to. Even when he's not interested in fantasizing. 

The orgasm the Detective had inadvertently given him the day before had been so sudden his body hadn't been prepared for it. He'd felt bliss from the tips of his toes to the ends of his eyelashes, but the satisfying, finishing spurt of release hadn't ever arrived. Then she'd drowned him in another tsunami minutes later, obliterating what little sense of conclusion he'd gotten. To make matters worse, he'd had zero luck with his continuing "self-service" experiments. _And_ he'd volunteered to endure her diatribe, which had nearly turned him into a bloody pretzel. 

At least, he's hidden the true extent of his randiness from her. He hopes. Perhaps. Mostly. 

That, or she's doing splendidly at faking obliviousness.

"Before we pick up Trixie," the Detective says, "I'm thinking about trying to extend the distance you have freedom of movement and interaction. Not too far. Like a quarter mile."

Speaking of obliviousness. 

"Pardon?" he asks.

"There's a park a few blocks from Linda's. I thought maybe I could take Trixie and Charlie while you're in session. How far did you get when you tried to leave before?"

"I've … no idea," he admits. When he'd stopped to gain his bearings, he'd been standing on a beach, but not _his_ beach. Nobody had been around, but that didn't mean much in November on a cold-ish morning. Need had flared like phosphorous fire. Unable to proceed farther, unwilling to return, he'd resolved not to move at all, but he'd been overwhelmed in less than an hour. He, the Lightbringer. The most willful angel. Couldn't bloody refuse the compulsion longer than an episode of _Bones_. 

_So_ very _much worse than you imagined_ , Lilith echoes in his ears, laughing. 

He shifts in his seat, a sudden chill sapping all hints of arousal. "I … wasn't paying attention to where I was."

"What were your surroundings like?" the Detective asks.

"A beach," is all he can say. 

"That doesn't mean a whole lot in Los Angeles."

"Yes, I _know_ ," he says, trying not to sound testy.

Concern burgeons in her expression. "You seem totally spooked. You okay?"

 _You look as though I've walked on your grave._ Lilith laughs, the discordant chord of glee skittering down his spine. _I imagine this is quite startling for you. Not being in control. Have you any idea what I've done?_

 _No,_ he says, the word pulled from him as if caught by a hook.

She smiles, her eyes empty and depthless. _How fun. A mystery, indeed, my king._

A foreign, phantom hand cups his chin, forcing him to look at Her as Lilith appraises his body like it’s a piece of meat for the market. 

_Fan your wings for me_ , _Lightbringer,_ she says.

 _No_ , he wants to snarl, but his throat won't work. Need grips him, crushes him. The crowd lining the lesser throne room titters with vile amusement, watching his erection surge as he pants and squirms and trembles and whimpers until, at last—he doesn't know how long—his mind shatters. His wings are stretched their full span when he returns to himself, aching and wrung out.

She strokes his wingbone. His gut roils, but he can do nothing. When she reaches the alula feather, she plucks it. Pain smashes his nerve endings. Reflexively, his wings fold into ether, into safety.

 _Bad angel,_ Lilith scolds. _Fan them again._

SHOW HER YOUR WINGS. Yearning crashes into him like a train all over again. SHOW HER. And he must. He _desires_ it—no he _doesn't_ —yes, he _does_. Mind and body clash.

 _Don't hide them from me again,_ Lilith drawls, stroking his clavicle. _They're mine now._ All _of you is mine._

He wants—doesn't want—that, too. 

_Always show them to me. Show me everything._

He will. He _needs_ to.

With a frigid sneer, she snatches his other alula feather and clutches both to her chest, while he does nothing.

My _king_ , _I suppose the question becomes … what will I do with you now that I have you?_ Her gaze roves his skin, all of it—she licks her lips like he's prime filet—before she steps back. _By all means, stew on the possibilities. It pleases me to watch you._

And then she leaves him there. Marinating in his own anxiety. Displayed like fine art as she retreats to his throne and sits. And stares. She toys with the alula feathers she took from him. Their pins glisten, the tips red, and he can feel a hot trickle of fluid down his feathered arms. His body throbs, and he can't—

"Lucifer, are you okay?" 

He gasps as the Detective's voice breaks him out of mental free fall. His heart is pounding in his ears, and his hands are cold and slippery. 

"Lucifer?"

The fog dissipates somewhat. What was …? Curiosity strikes numb disinterest and dies. A cataclysm of logic and irrationality. He rubs a thumb along the wool of his pant leg, up and down and up and down. _His_ suit. A layer. 

"Where were you just now?" she asks.

He flashes an empty smile at her. "Why, _here_ , Detective." The truth. But not. "Where else?" 

She offers a doubtful, "Hmm," into the silence.

He sighs. "Do what you must, Detective." 

"You mean, extend your range?"

"If you think it wise."

"You don't sound thrilled."

He laughs unhappily. "I'm bloody well not, but the prospect of an 'oops' winding me up doesn't eclipse the idea of having more space." Or so he tells himself, despite the frigid spill of sweat at the nape of his neck.

"You're sure?"

"A quarter mile, yes?"

"Yeah."

No. "Do it."

As she pulls up to a red light, she grabs her iPhone and navigates to the notes app where she keeps all her commands stored. "Ready?"

 _No_. "Do it." He squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for the train to smash him.

She reads off the freedom of movement command, this time adjusting the distance allowed from fifty feet to a quarter mile. 

The moments creep. 

The sound of exhaust from neighboring cars fills the quiet. 

Nothing.

He rubs his pant legs up and down and up and down, waiting, agonizing. But … nothing. 

_Nothing_.

He sighs again, a great relieved gust. His fingers are shaking. _He's_ shaking. He drags them through his hair, trying to conceal them from her. "It … seems to have worked?" 

"Great!" She barrels onward, leading with another command extending his freedom of interaction, before he can even process freedom of movement. The car cabin swims around his face, and he grips the seat to keep himself from free fall.

No reprisal arrives. He feels sick. What the hell is wrong with him? She wouldn't hurt him for more than a moment, and never on purpose. _She's_ safe. Unlike _Lilith_. "Detective …." 

"We could test distances?" she asks. "Maybe I can give you even more—"

"No. Please." He slumps against the window, his thoughts scattering all over again. "I'm … I've no fortitude for an 'oops,' let alone a potential string of them."

"But you just said—" 

"I know what I bloody said," he snaps. He was worried about … something. Wasn't he? "The line between various truths is … rather infinitesimal for me at the moment." 

Her green eyes glisten like she wants to cry, and now everything is _worse_.

"I … hope you enjoy your time in the park with your miscreant, Detective," he says, lost but meaning it.

"Me, too. And I hope—" She drums her fingers on the steering wheel, once, twice, again. "I wonder if Linda can make a diagnosis now." 

The cold creeping coil of anxiety in his belly drains away. Going to Dr. Linda's is okay. "I suppose we'll see."

The light turns green, and they drive on.

* * *

"No." Dr. Linda clutches her sleeping child to her spit-stained bathrobe. 

"O … kay?" the Detective says.

"I don't want you to take him."

"Well, that's okay," The Detective glances at Lucifer with a baffled expression. "We can always just stay—"

" _No_ ," Dr. Linda snaps more vehemently.

"No, we can't stay, or …?"

Her lower lip trembles.

The Detective had left Beatrice playing on the front lawn by the car, in anticipation of leaving with the Doctor's child. The house smells faintly of burnt things, and in the roughly thirty-six hours since they'd last visited, hints of disorder have crept back into the space like a roach infestation. A rumpled blanket here. A dirty plate there. The encroaching chaos is enough to give Lucifer a facial tick.

"Dr. Linda, are you quite all right?" he asks, giving into the urge to shake and fold the crumb-covered afghan barely clinging to the back of the couch. "Shall we help you tidy up again?" 

"No. I'm sorry," Dr. Linda expels in a heaving gush of emotion. Tears streak, and she rubs her eyes with the hand not clutching the baby. "I'm sorry; I'm being silly. I know."

"It's not silly at all," the Detective says. "Linda, have you let _anyone_ take him since the Mayan …?"

"Not even Maze." The words are woeful.

"Oh, Linda. Is this why you're not working yet?"

"It's not like I can have sessions with a wriggling baby on my lap!" 

"It's okay," the Detective assures her. "It's okay. I can just watch him in the bedroom again if that makes you more comfortable. Trixie will help. Or we can reschedule?"

"I'm …." Dr. Linda pats the child's back, soothing it. Rocking it. "I'm …." She closes her eyes. "We have a session."

"Nothing is set in stone," Lucifer intones. Now that he's here, the idea of leaving without "therapy" is a relief, frankly. His gaze shifts to the end table, where the dried husk of a muffin crowns an abandoned plate. Remnant chocolate chips had left dark smears across the ceramic. He grabs the dish, walking it to the dishwasher by way of the bin, pausing en route to shake the fossilized food into the rubbish. "Really, Doctor. It's quite all right if you'd rather postpone."

"We have a session," Dr. Linda repeats like he hasn't spoken, "and you're my friends." 

"Dr. Linda?"

"We have a session." 

"Doctor—"

She holds up her index finger, and he closes his mouth, looking in query at the Detective, instead. The Detective can only shrug as Dr. Linda's breaths even into slow drags. The child gurgles, babbling, and she pats its back. At last, she nods, opening her eyes again. "You should take him," she decides, warbling slightly as she holds the child out for the Detective. "Please. Take him to the park with Trixie."

"Linda, you don't have to do that," the Detective says. "Really, it's okay."

"You're right," Dr. Linda replies. "It _is_ okay. And, yes, I _do_ have to do this." She almost stifles a pitiful sound of protest. "It's been months, and it's time, and who on the planet would he be safer with than you? Please, take him."

"You're sure?"

"No, but _please_ , take him anyway."

"I have my sidearm with me," the Detective soothes, thrusting out her hip to emphasize the black 9mm resting in its holster as she clutches the child to her breast. "Everything will be fine. I won't let him out of my sight. I promise."

Dr. Linda coughs with grief. "I know."

"And I've got my cellphone. I'll leave the ringer on loud."

"Thank you." 

Dr. Linda mourns in silence as the Detective places the child into its pushchair, and then trundles with it onto the darkening stoop. A brisk breeze, chilled by the dusk, billows into the house. 

"The Detective is quite capable with offspring," he babbles as she joins Beatrice, and the trio turns down the walk, toward the park. "I trust her with my life, and I don't trust my life to many. Young Charlie is in the best of hands."

"I know," Dr. Linda says softly. "Thanks." She takes a breath. And then another. More deep, even drags, before finally closing the door and twisting the deadbolt. Another breath. And another. And then she smiles at him, though her expression doesn't wrinkle the corners of her eyes. "Come on, Lucifer. Let's … let's get started."

His heart twists with dread.

* * *

Dr. Linda brews coffee and dons a clean bathrobe. Wearing unstained black terrycloth, she returns with a steaming mug clutched in either hand. She puts the mugs on coasters, nudging one of them in his direction, before easing into the wingback chair opposite the sofa. Picking up her notebook, she rolls out the kinks in her neck. 

"Lucifer," she says, "after consulting my colleague last night, I strongly believe you have some kind of dissociative amnesia, and I'd like to proceed based on that conclusion. How does that sound to you?"

"Um"—he fumbles with the top button of his shirt, releasing it from the hole—"should it sound any particular way, Doctor?"

"You don't have questions? Comments? Concerns?"

"Why would I be concerned?"

She regards him for a long moment, eyes narrowing. "You … weren't listening to me at all when I explained what dissociative amnesia is, were you." Not a question.

"I was most certainly listening!" Just not to her.

Her gaze tips toward the ceiling, like she's appealing to a higher power.

"He won't help, Doctor." Something inside his chest tightens. An echo of a recollection.

She grips the sides of her notebook, tensing, yet her words are soothing—a gentle, low-pitched murmur—when, at last, she continues, "Lucifer, sometimes, when we experience traumas—physical, psychological, any kind of trauma, really—the emotions or sensations involved can be so intense we don't feel able to think about them in the aftermath. When that happens, our minds can inadvertently create, well, sort of a wall, that blocks us from accessing our memories of those events."

A laugh pops loose from Lucifer's belly before he can contain it.

"What's so funny?" Dr. Linda asks.

"Because that's preposterous. A wall in my head, really?" Laughing again, he reaches for the coffee mug to take a sip. A truncated slurping noise fills the quiet as a shock of sweetness mingles with a bitter bite. She's loaded the cup with sugar and cream, and the liquid is just short of scalding, exactly as he likes it, minus the scotch. "You've outdone yourself this time, Doctor."

"Have I?"

"I am the Devil." He sets down the mug. "I've been ejected from Heaven in a big bloody ball of condemned conflagration—quite upsetting, you know; a moment I only _wish_ I could forget—and yet I recall my descent in excruciating detail. I remember _everything_ in excruciating detail."

"Do you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You once told me you've been telling yourself a narrative since before you can recall."

"What narrative?"

"That God is manipulating you." She peers at him intently. "Do you remember?"

_Why do I hate myself so much?_

He glares at his knees. "I … yes. I remember."

"So, was that a figure of speech?" Dr. Linda says. "Or do you genuinely not remember when you started believing as a point of fact that God is manipulating you?"

"It … wasn't a figure of speech," he admits, clutching the cushions by his thighs. 

"Which implies your memory isn't as perfect as you claim."

His lip twitches—a partial snarl—before he can tamp his reaction. He tries to twist the ghost of his onyx ring, which no longer encircles his middle finger. The tightness behind his sternum compresses until he's barely pushing air through his body.

"You all right?" Dr. Linda asks. 

"Yes, Doctor."

"Can you tell me how you're feeling right now?"

"No."

"Lucifer," Dr. Linda says soothingly, "this type of amnesia is usually perceived as an act of self preservation. It would be perfectly understandable if treating it makes you feel cornered."

"I am not feeling cornered," he snaps.

She holds up her hands. "Of course."

"I am _not_." 

"Okay," she says in a rush. "Okay. It's okay. Absolutely, I believe you." 

He glances at the door. A quarter mile. Pointless. A quarter mile is _nothing_ when he can span dimensions with a flick of his wings, if only he were free.

"Lucifer, if it's all right," Dr. Linda continues, "I'd like to try something called cognitive behavioral therapy with you. CBT for short. It's commonly used for treatment in these situations. Are you familiar with CBT?"

He snorts. "The only CBT I'm aware of has nothing to do with the brain, unless you believe the adage men think with a different appendage." 

"Huh?"

"Cock and ball torture."

"I see." She doesn't smile. "You're trying to disarm me with humor."

"Don't be ridiculous. CBT is no laughing matter." He tries to ignore the still-throbbing ache in his groin. His body. The heat—the desire—is long gone, replaced only by an unsettled, unspent bubble of perennial frustration that drives him to twitch and fidget. The walls around him shrink inward, almost brushing his shoulders. "Though, it's quite the fortuitous parallel to the Detective's and my current case."

"Is it."

"Oh, yes, Doctor. It would seem the murder victim was into a spot of feti—"

"Lucifer," Dr. Linda cuts him off sharply before continuing in a gentler tone, " _no_. Enough. I'm happy to engage with you about anything you want to talk about, but not if it means you're deflecting us from our ultimate goal."

 _Bad angel,_ Lilith scolds.

His heart pounds. The walls are like a coffin burying his body. His ears ring. He hunches against the sofa cushions, swallowing. 

"You seem … distracted," Dr. Linda says, her voice wavering in and out as though they're separated by a spotty cellphone connection. "Would you like to discuss that, instead?"

He flashes her what he hopes is a winning smile. "I'm only achey, Doctor." He makes a show of massaging his left trapezius muscle, cracking the bones of his neck as he lengthens himself. Or … tries to, anyway. The walls are _so_ close. "It would appear living with the Detective impinges my normal resilience."

"Hmm."

Why does she not seem convinced?

"So, how _are_ you feeling?" she prods.

He looks away, rocking slightly as he rubs his palms down his thighs. His layer. _His_.

"Can you tell me how you're feeling?"

" _No_."

"Lucifer, I promise you. This is a safe space."

" _Well, I don't feel safe_ ," he snaps, the words a serrated knife as he lurches to his feet.

"Can you tell me why?"

The walls press inward. 

The ceiling is too near.

 _No_ , he tries to say, but he can't, because his throat is closing. He's constricted—he can't struggle, he can't _move_ —and so he petrifies, exposed, on display, humiliated.

 _All of you is mine,_ Lilith whispers against his ear, the sound a discordant jangle that makes his insides clench. 

"Okay," Lilith tells him. "Okay, take a deep breath." The ringing won't stop. He wavers on his feet. "Lucifer, take a deep breath."

_Always show them to me. Show me everything._

"I don't want to," he says, feeling small. 

"Just take a deep breath, Lucifer," Lilith tells him. "Take a deep breath, and count to three."

My _king, I suppose the question becomes … what will I do with you now that I have you?_

His lungs won't work. Black spots waver and flare at the edges of his vision. His heart pounds. He's going to die. He's going to die by this couch, trapped in a tiny human-made box, subjugated and strangled and— 

"Lucifer, _listen_ to me. Listen to my voice."

He must. 

"Take a deep breath, and count to three," Lilith repeats. "Deep breath, and count to three."

His teeth are almost chattering as he sucks down air in one big shuddering gulp. 

"Good. Now, hold it in."

Her tone rubs him like sandpaper, sultry and strident and sinister. He flinches, waiting for the flood of Her desire to drown him. But it doesn't, and now he's confused. He gulps down more air, despite himself. Until his lungs are bursting. He won't exhale. He can't until she—

"Count to three in your head." 

He can do that. Two. Three. 

"Now, blow it out, and count to three again."

He exhales. Two. Three.

"In."

He inhales. 

"Out."

He exhales. The room swims, and "she" splits into two again as past and present bifurcate. At some point, he'd fallen back against the couch. With a curdled moan, he tips forward. 

"In," Lilith commands, apposed with Dr. Linda—the voice a dissonant clash of jagged ice and rolling warmth—and he inhales.

"Out," they say, and he exhales.

The moments crawl.

"Good, Lucifer," they soothe. "That's really good." Only Dr. Linda now. "Just keep doing that."

He nods shakily, cradling his head as he rests his elbows on his knees. Not once is he spurred onward except by words. No unseen whip of wanting ever strikes. 

He hears the faucet in the kitchen running. Then a flicker of movement in front of him. He flinches, a panicked, spiraling yelp coiling in his throat. 

"It's okay," the Doctor assures him, backing away. "It's okay. That's _your_ bubble. Just breathe and count, Lucifer. Breathe and count. You're okay."

Again, he isn't forced.

He peers over the edges of his fingers at her, making a point of waiting a good ten seconds before he inhales again. Waiting. _Testing_. The sharp, soulless sneer at the peripheral of his awareness never bites. Only Dr. Linda's concerned brown eyes, crinkled by age and care at their corners, peer back at him. 

He takes another breath and blows it out. And another. And another. Each time easier than the last.

"Better?" Dr. Linda says softly.

He nods, not yet ready to speak. A glass full of ice water rests on another coaster by his knee. That wasn't there before. 

Suspicion cuts him like a knife. 

Would she poison him? 

He … wait. 

Dr. Linda wouldn't bloody poison him. 

What the _fuck_.

He grabs the glass and tips it back, drinking greedily to soothe his aching throat, swallowing gulp after gulp as a giant _fuck you_ to whatever's hijacked his brain. Meanwhile, the rest of his body feels like it was thrown from Wilshire Grand Center and smashed into the sidewalk below. Even his eyeballs hurt.

"If this is your idea of CBT," he croaks, "I think you've made your aim a little broad." 

Dr. Linda doesn't seem to get the joke. "Lucifer, just so we're clear, I'm not trying to make you remember things. That's not my function here; not at all. I swear to you." 

He presses the cold glass against his forehead, rasping, "I thought the goal was to cure me."

"Dissociative amnesia isn't a binary condition. We're not trying to find an off switch. Success in treatment isn't predicated by the sudden return of your memory. We're only hoping to change your thought processes in ways that will help you navigate your condition."

Unease rifles fingers through his mind. "Change … my …?"

"Sometimes, CBT is a matter of identifying trigger points, so you can avoid them altogether—that's why I keep asking you how you're feeling; I've been trying to home on your triggers. Sometimes, it's about training you what to do when you do experience a trigger point, like the breathing exercise I just taught you. Sometimes, it's about trying to lessen the impact of triggers by reframing the perceptions causing them to trigger in the first place." 

The lights smear with gleaming halos. He closes his eyes, but the swimmy feeling of the room revolving in the blackness makes everything worse. 

"Lucifer, would you like to stop our session?"

Yes. "Reframing …?" 

"Well, for example," she says. "You've been talking to me for years, haven't you?" 

"Yes." 

"Have I ever hurt you?"

Lilith laughs—the halos all flare—but he takes a deep breath, pushing her away. Two. Three. She is not _here_. Two. Three. "Not physically." Two. Three.

Dr. Linda frowns. "I've hurt you in other ways?"

He tries not to think of how shocked she'd been as he'd backed away. How her lip had trembled in terror. "It's … not relevant anymore."

"Not releva—oh." She stills, her expression suddenly grave. "When you showed me your face." 

"Well, I didn't say it wasn't warranted."

But she shakes her head. "Lucifer, I offer you my sincerest apologies for reacting badly when you showed me the truth. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'm very sorry."

Not words he hears often. Not from anyone sincere. "Apology accepted, of course. Honestly, I wasn't asking for—"

"I know. But I wanted to say it anyway."

"Thank you, Doctor. That … means quite a lot."

A warm smile stretches across her face, briefly easing her haggard worry lines, lessening the deep shadow of melancholy marring her skin. "Speaking of reframing," she says, "let's … adjust that question to: do you trust me?"

Mostly. "Doctor, who do you take me for?"

"Would you agree I have your best interests at heart?" 

Mostly. "One would assume."

"Have you found our sessions helpful in the past?" 

Mostly. He slouches forward as he reaches for the water glass again. Icy chill spreads down his aching esophagus, numbing him as he takes a sip. "Just yesterday, actually."

"Oh?" she asks. "Did you work things out with Chloe?"

"I hope so."

"That's great, Lucifer. I'm glad to hear it." Another warm smile flashes across her face. "So, in light of that, and what we've just talked about, what are some positive things you can tell yourself about me if you feel unsafe during a session?"

He frowns.

"That you trust me, right?" she continues. "And I have your best interests at heart. And …?" She waves her pen at him, gesturing him onward.

"And … I've found most sessions to be helpful in the past?" 

"Yes!" She claps. "Yes, that's right, Lucifer. That's what reframing is. Trying to jog your brain into perceiving things differently."

"That feels quite a lot like lying."

"It isn't," she assures him. "This isn't about encouraging denial. You're just focusing on a different facet of the truth. And you can repeat the heart of it in your head like a mantra: you can trust me, this is helpful, and I'm in your corner. You can even do the breathing exercise I showed you simultaneously. Okay?"

Exhaustion seeps into every crevice of his skin. "All right, Doctor."

A motorcycle guns down the street, catching Dr. Linda's attention. He grabs the afghan he'd folded, pulling the soft fleece around him, trying not to shiver as he eases back. A layer. He likes layers. His eyes drift shut. When he's horizontal, the spinning doesn't make his stomach lurch so badly, and he doesn't have to deal with all the colors, shapes, and lights, this way. 

"Lucifer?" Dr. Linda says, sounding worried.

He waves a hand in her direction. "Continue, please, Doctor. I'm only resting my eyes." 

"You're sure?"

No. But the Detective hasn't returned yet anyway. "Continue."

"Okay." Rustling follows as Dr. Linda shifts in her seat. "This will require some legwork, but another mainstay of CBT we can eventually try is to re-expose you to some of your trauma in a milder way."

"What, like torture me with blunt implements instead of sharp ones?"

"That's … not exactly what I meant, no." Her words are wry. "The purpose is to vaccinate you against stressors. Like"—she pauses, thinking—"like what I just did with Charlie earlier. Letting Chloe take him. My trigger is letting him go. But intellectually, I know that letting him go with Chloe is one of the safest ways I could ever part with him. By re-exposing myself to my trauma in a milder way, I'm better preparing myself to endure a more extreme version." 

He cracks one eyelid open. "You _expect_ your child to be taken from you again?"

"Lucifer, he _is_ taken from me again," she replies, her voice cracking a little. "Every time I get triggered. That's what a trigger is."

He pulls the blanket closer, resettling. "Save for bits and bobs, I don't remember my bloody trauma."

"That's why I said we've got legwork to do. We need to figure out what your triggers actually are, and what about those situations triggers you."

"Ah."

She slurps her coffee. "Do you think you were tortured with sharp implements?"

"What?"

"That was the first example you jumped to."

"Oh." He shakes his head. "No." 

"You seem very certain."

"Speaking as a torturer—in a supervisory capacity, at least," he says, "it wouldn't be effective in my case."

"Why?"

The ringing from before intensifies like a gong in his ears. "Because, I can disconnect from it if I desire."

"What can you disconnect from?" she asks.

"Pain." 

_Oh, no, no, no, my king. None of that. You mustn't drift._

Need ravages his body, turning his soul to inferno, yanking him like an undertow in reverse, from placid depths of nothingness to sunburnt sand. The room comes back into focus. The pain and anxiety he left behind sinks in new teeth, a fiery bite in his limbs. And then—

 _You mustn't_ ever _drift_.

"Lucifer?" Dr. Linda is calling from far away. "Lucifer? Remember what we talked about? Just breathe."

He sucks in a breath, digging his fingers into the couch cushions as his chest tightens all over again. The weight of the blanket isn't helping anymore. Nothing is helping.

"I've been hearing her," he admits, the words reedy. 

"Hearing who?"

" _Her_."

"Chloe?"

"Lilith. Yesterday. When the Detective praised me. And today. She …."

"A memory?"

He stares into the backs of his eyelids as the image in his mind's eye obliterates. "I don't know." He curls tighter, his eyes burning as he tries very hard not to lose himself. "I don't _know_. She makes my skin crawl." And whenever he focuses on her voice, she leaves. 

A good thing, probably. 

"Can you tell me anything about her?" Doctor Linda asks.

He takes spasmodic, sucking breaths. "Doctor, I—" 

"It's okay. You're okay. Deep breaths."

The memory dissolves like salt in water, reincorporating into solution, and he's left only with the disquieting sense that something was intensely wrong just now. 

Maybe he's lying. 

Maybe he _had_ been tortured. 

Lilith is the type to torture for fun. Sharp implements. Blunt ones. Hot or cold. Anything that hurts. She'd pull the wings from a butterfly just to watch it squirm and desiccate and die. A sad metamorphosis from the woman she'd been.

He rubs his thighs, underneath the blanket. The wool of his suit rasps against his fingertips.

A reminder.

Layers.

"Lucifer?"

"What were we talking about?" he says faintly. 

"Don't worry about it. Everything's fine." The empathy in Dr. Linda's tone almost bleeds. Something slaps onto the end table as she sets it down. Her notebook, perhaps. "Why don't we stop for the—"

"I sat with the Detective and the offspring last night," he blurts, latching onto a different memory. A better one. "They were watching some silly show about talking equines. I don't know. I didn't pay attention." 

"Oh?" 

"I don't believe she made me feel it," he continues. "I don't think it was manufactured—but how can I …?" 

"You don't think what was manufactured?"

"Safety."

"Why would that be manufactured?"

"Nothing. Nothing, I'm being silly." He laughs, though it sounds like a sob to his ears. "I …." 

"Why would it be silly to think of Chloe as your safe space?" the Doctor says.

"No, I meant it's silly to doubt."

"I can see why you might feel conflicted."

He laughs unhappily. "Can you."

"But I can also understand," she soothes, "given your history, why she would represent a safe space. You've had a lot of firsts with her. Both good and bad. And you've survived. Thrived, even, for the most part."

"That's true, I suppose."

"Do you think you might offer the same haven for her?"

"That would be lovely." He tips his head into the back cushion. "Quid pro quo and all."

"Or … maybe just love?"

"Hmm."

He feels better when he pulls up his knees. When he minimizes the space he occupies and puts his back to the open room. The blanket is a cocoon he needs. He burrows. 

"Have you any idea when the Detective will return?" he murmurs.

"No, I'm sorry." 

He flinches as something adds to the weight pressing down on him. "It's just me," Dr. Linda says. "Just adding a quilt for you."

"Oh." The added heft of the extra layer feels good. Safe. Warm. He peers blearily over his shoulder at her, but she's nothing but a vaguely peach-colored blur. "That's kind of you."

"I'll call her and tell her to come back now," Dr. Linda murmurs by his ear. "You just relax, okay?"

"Hmm."

He finds it far too easy to disconnect.

First, he's watching himself from the ceiling, hovering high above. 

And then he's weightless.

And far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everybody who takes the time to leave comments! I appreciate hearing from you :)


	19. "pre-existing affection"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to your regularly scheduled programming :) Enjoy!

Lucifer is wrong. 

After his session with Linda, he's just … wrong. 

Foggy. 

Slow. 

Mute, even as Trixie peppers him with questions from the backseat. Like he'd been after Chloe inadvertently forced him to orgasm. As soon as they cross her apartment's threshold, Trixie skips straight into the living room, but Lucifer drifts toward the stairs as though he's sleepwalking.

"Lucifer," Chloe murmurs, but he doesn't seem to hear her. 

Her first instinct is to reach for his jacket. Luckily, her second instinct tells her first instinct it's an idiot. She jams her knuckles against the seams inside her pockets, venting her need for tactile reassurance.

" _Lucifer,_ " she tries again before adding a sharp-but-almost-whispered, "Lucifer, _hey_!" 

He stops and turns like he's stuck in slow-mo, his gaze never quite connecting with hers. Instead, he regards a distant point beyond her shoulder. "Yes, Detective?"

"Want to sit downstairs with us for a bit?" she suggests. "We could order food? Watch your favorite show? Anything?"

"No, I wish to sleep." Monotone. Distant.

Chloe had been shocked to find him curled in a fetal position on Linda's couch, huddled under a comforter and an afghan like he was freezing, his long, lithe body looking deceptively small. At first, she'd thought he was asleep, but as soon as she'd spoken, he'd pushed the blankets back and said without inflection, _Time to leave, is it?_

Which … bizarre.

Curiosity inducing.

Though it had killed her not to go into interview mode, beyond confirming the dissociative amnesia diagnosis, Chloe hadn't asked Linda for details of the session. She'd respected his privacy and the professional position Linda was stuck in by extension, and she'd limited herself to a soft, _Can I do anything for him?_ Spoken on the stoop, after Lucifer had already headed back to the car.

Linda's response had been, _Just spend time together. Support is crucial._

But how can Chloe spend time with him if he's immediately injecting distance? Immediately fleeing. And he just seems so traumatized. 

No. No, he _is_ traumatized. 

His usual projected bravado makes it easy to pretend everything is fine, but something hurt him so much he carved the ordeal from his head like a surgeon excising tumors. And while she doesn't have personal experience with this kind of trauma, she does with mental illness. One thing that had helped her most when she'd been suffering from PPD like Linda is now, was Dan. The quiet dependability of having him beside her every night, even if all he was doing was reading a book while she slept. 

Before the idea can fully form in her brain, she finds herself blurting, "Do you wanna sleep with me?" 

"… Detective?" Tone. Inflection. An actual facial expression. _Finally_. 

"Just sleep," Chloe clarifies, unwilling to let the misunderstanding linger. Figures, her not exactly unintended innuendo would be what snaps him out of his stupor. "For the company; that's all. Not sex." 

"Ah." 

"If you want."

He seems as though he's seriously considering her offer. The longing in his expression is unmistakable as he grips the railing. His body sways in place. 

"I sleep on the right side," she adds, smiling at him. "Left is all yours if you want it, yeah?" 

"I … shouldn't," he says at last.

"Why shouldn't you?"

"It wouldn't be comforting, and I know that's what you intend." 

Her heart constricts, though she hopes she tamps her reaction before it sprawls across her face. "Why wouldn't I—I mean _it_ —be comforting?" 

"Because …." He sways in place again, grimacing before he schools himself. "I … I appreciate the offer, Detective, but … no."

"Lucifer—"

He moves before she can blink, snaking his arms around her and pulling her close. His sandalwood scent makes her smile despite her watering eyes. Instinctively, she slips her palms underneath his jacket, interlocking her fingers over the small of his back. 

His nose presses into her hair, and he nuzzles her. "I _like_ the way you smell." 

"Me, too. About you, I mean."

He clutches her like she's his one handhold on a cliff. "I like the sound of your heartbeat," he adds in a heady, rumbling tone. "Your life."

She presses her ear to his chest, listening. She can't hear his heart through the many layers. Not when he's breathing this roughly. But she can imagine. 

"Me, too," she says. "So much. I'm glad you're here."

They linger. His grip tightens.

"I don't suppose you'd enjoy sleeping together in the colloquial sense?" he says, a hint of pain biting every syllable. "Please?"

"Lucifer, we _can't_. Not like this."

"I thought not." 

She looks up at him. "Did I … wind you up again, somehow? Did I say something?"

"You exist, and I'm … quite raw." 

"I'm really sorry."

"Please, don't apologize," he murmurs. "Loving you is …." The wistful hint of a smile tugs at his lips before he shakes his head. "That this compulsion is twisting my pre-existing affection for its own ends is … not your fault." He gently pushes his fingers through her hair. "Goodnight, Detective."

And then he's gone around the corner, and all Chloe can do is leave him be. 

The gist of what he'd said beyond, _I'm bloody miserable_ , doesn't sink in until she rejoins Trixie in the living room.

 _Loving you is_ …. 

Is.

Present tense.

With pre-existing affection.

Lucifer Morningstar loves her. 

And he'd loved her before.

He _said_ it. 

Stealthily, but he did. 

And that's ….

 _Tragic, given these ridiculous, awful circumstances_ , her tiny voice supplies. 

"What's funny?" says Trixie. 

The cushion squeaks as Chloe leans to kiss her forehead. "Nothing, baby. Just the universe."

"Why's the universe funny?"

 _It really fucking isn't_ , Chloe wants to wail. 

But if she doesn't laugh, she'll cry. 

* * *

Thanks to Lucifer's seemingly endless supply of IOUs in the greater Los Angeles area, along with the fact Neiman Marcus has a home department, Chloe now has a $6,000 automatic coffeemaker with more options than her car, a $300 toaster whose only defining feature is a designer label, a freaking $800 blender that … blends?, and some pretty kitchen towels with pomegranates on them. 

Figuring out breakfast is a matter of realizing she has eggs, butter, and cheese, and also, thanks to her busted freezer, thawed ham and bread. Perfect. While the new coffee maker burbles and gurgles, filling her apartment with the enticing smell of an imminent caffeine infusion, she makes Hawaiian sandwiches.

Lucifer nabs the first one off the "done" plate before Trixie registers it's there. 

"Lucifer, come _on_ ," Trixie whines. "I'm hungry." 

The one-eyed croque crunches as he bites down. "Well, I'm hungrier," he counters, the words muffled by his mouthful. "And older. And bigger." He chews once, his eyes rolling back a bit, his shoulders sagging. A blissful hum fills his throat. 

The face he makes when he orgasms. 

Which … she now knows for a fact, and holy shit, never mind. 

"Can angels starve like humans, Mom?" Trixie wonders.

Lucifer scowls mid-chew, and Trixie's lips mush up in a dramatic frown.

"I'm not sure, baby," Chloe replies. The griddle sizzles as she adds the next croque. "Lucifer, _can_ angels starve like humans?"

He licks his lips, his slow swallow accompanied with an almost audible guilt-ridden gulp. "But … but I've not tasted one of these in millennia! It's nostalgia on a bloody plate!" 

"How'd you not have a Hawaiian sandwich for millennia?" Trixie asks. "Mom made 'em for you last year."

"Time is different in Hell, child." 

"How?"

"That's … simply how it is. It's different in Heaven as well. No dimensions run in sync, really."

Trixie's consternation intensifies, her forehead wrinkling up, too. "That makes no sense."

"Well, _I_ didn't bloody design it!" he huffs. "Blame Dad."

Trixie turns to Chloe. "It's okay, Mom. Lucifer should probably have the first one if it's been _millennia_ since he had one."

"Yeah, I agree," says Chloe slowly. "And there's _plenty_ for everyone, anyway."

His eyes narrow as he looks back and forth between the two of them, the sandwich clutched close to his mouth like he's a squirrel preparing to stuff a nut into his jowls. Then, with a melodramatic sigh, he drops the partially eaten croque onto Trixie's plate with a grumbled, "Bloody hell. Well played. May I have the next one?"

Chloe grins. "Sure."

"And, no, I cannot starve, at least not that I've discovered. Being around _you_ might change that."

"Well, like I said, there's plenty to go around." She flips the sandwich on the griddle. The butter sizzles. "You two can eat until the bread runs out." 

"You're not having any?" he asks.

"Nah. Just coffee for me."

"Shouldn't you eat at least one, given—as young Beatrice has indicated—starvation is a possibility for your species?" 

Trixie covers her mouth with her hand to whisper in Chloe's direction, "I think he got you, Mom."

"You both did!" Chloe says with a chuckle before amending, "Fine. I'll eat—"

A special ringtone interrupts. 

"Dad!" exclaims Trixie.

"You wanna get it while I finish up in here?" asks Chloe, nodding toward the phone. 

Trixie scrambles around the scorched counter to snatch the device. "Hi, Dad! Mom's cooking Hawaiian sandwiches. Is Miami fun? How's Grammie?" She trots into her bedroom. 

Lucifer watches Trixie depart with a peculiar, almost wistful expression. 

"You okay?" Chloe asks.

The wistfulness is gone in a blink. He tilts his head at her. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Last night, you seemed …." She trails away, giving him a chance to fill in the blank, but he doesn't.

He practically gleams in the soft morning light, his warm demeanor nothing like the hollowed-out, weary shell he'd been last night. 

In fact, he looks … really, _really_ good.

"Thank you," he says, as if she's spoken aloud. "Sleep helped."

"Good," she replies.

A subtle hint of eyeliner makes his dark eyes seem bigger, wider—like entrancing traps. His sleek suit hugs his knife-edged lines and sharp angles, framing him like a work of art. The dark dust of stubble on his chin and the product-laden wet curl of hair over his forehead, in particular, combine with an extra open button on his shirt to give him a strategically mussed appear— 

She shakes her head, stopping herself from licking her lower lip. No. Bad. _Bad_ thoughts, she scolds internally, reminding herself he isn't here by choice.

When the fancy coffeemaker dings, presenting her with two newly filled, steaming cups, she's happy to divert herself into offering him a too chipper, "Coffee?" 

Nodding, he takes a mug.

She scoops up the next croque, dumping it onto the "done" plate. He snatches the greasy sandwich, gripping it with a paper towel before taking an epic-sized bite. He eats like it's more than just sandwiches he hasn't seen in millennia. 

"Does Hell have _any_ real food or drink?" she asks.

"No," he answers. "Nothing."

"Only the ashy guilt stuff in the loops?"

"Yes."

She's not sure whether she's relieved to know Lilith hadn't starved him. Only his situation had.

* * *

"In Tegucigalpa," Maze announces, her voice crackling over the cruiser's speakers as the precinct shrinks in the rearview mirror. 

A rapid-fire flood of not-Spanish—something indigenous?—follows. 

Maze snaps something not directed at the phone, which kicks off another emotional exchange. 

There's cursing—not Maze's. 

Chloe shares a look with Lucifer, who's listening with an ear tilted toward the radio. Chloe's lost, but he seems to be following, an odd expression on his face. They'd stopped briefly to submit the iPad to forensics—Ella hadn't been in yet—and to retrieve the chastity device from evidence lockup. They'd agreed to head to USC. Maze had called shortly after.

The cursing ceases after a long diatribe, and then a sigh blusters over the line. "Haven't found him yet," Maze concludes.

"But"—Lucifer laughs, the titter of syllables sounding almost nervous—"you have a strong suspicion where to search, yes?"

"Not really. Tried a few places."

"Have you—"

"Already done," Maze interjects.

"What abou—"

"Stop backseat bounty hunting, will you?"

Lucifer winces. "But th—"

"Yeah, he's _not_ in any of his usual haunts. If _you_ can think of it, I did, too." 

"No." He glares at the speakers, pointing with an outstretched index finger to scold empty space. "No, you cannot give—"

"Did I _say_ I was giving up?" Maze snaps. "I've still got—" A thunderous cacophony bleeps out the rest, followed by a distant pop, pop, pop, and then another cacophony explodes like a bomb went off in front of the phone.

"Maze, was that gunfire?" Chloe exclaims. Hell, that sounded like a Desert Eagle. "Are you shooting—"

" _Fuck_ , gotta go. Sorry."

"Maze," snaps Lucifer. " _Maze_." He devolves into a sibilant almost-hiss as he bites out, " _Mazikeen!"_ But the connection ends. "Bloody hell, that demon will be the literal end of me! And why must John Constantine be so bloody slippery the one bloody time I've actual need of him? He never made himself scarce _before_." 

Silence stretches in the car. 

A jagged, upset breath escapes him. He rubs his temples like he aches, all of his previously pleasant facade melting into remembered rawness. Now, he just looks like he wants to punch something. 

Maybe sleep hadn't restored him, after all. Maybe sleep had only reset his ability to fake being fine. Which … is a troubling thought. 

"I apologize," he grinds out, simmering, "for my outburst." 

"Why?" she asks. "I'd be upset, too. Not at Maze, but … the situation."

"Yes, 'Bee tee dubs"—he puts up air quotes—"no imminent rescue for you. Be a slave. It's _fun_.'" His eyes squeeze shut as he flops back against the seat. " _Fuck_. Bloody fucking hell."

His ricochet into guttural vulgarity shocks her like someone splashed a drink in her face. He's never been the type. But she'd be—has been—dropping f-bombs, too. 

"I'm here," is all she can say, her chest heavy, hurting.

"I know."

His ragged breathing calms. She weaves through traffic, merging onto the highway. Bumper to bumper cars caterpillar along, speeding up and slowing down and speeding up and slowing down. 

Warmth spreads into her thigh. A pressure, as he reaches across the car compartment and places his fingers against her jeans. Not like he's feeling her up—just … reassuring himself. Taking comfort in her presence. A lump forms in her throat. 

"Do you have a backup plan in case we can't find this John guy?" she asks softly.

"Other than pray to Dad, not really."

"No, seriously."

"I _am_ bloody serious."

But … surely God can't be the only option. That's too demoralizing to fathom. "There's really no one else you know who could help?"

"Detective, I wasn't being facetious when I said curses and magic are dying arts. Most of the prevalent specialists reside in Hell already. Which is probably how I'm in this bloody blasted predicament as it is. Lilith must have garnered someone's aid. How, I've no idea, but she must've."

"Oh," Chloe says, the gravity of the situation starting to coil around her ankles like weeds to pull her under. "Well, I'm still waiting to hear back from Adeboye. He's got a lot of resources Maze doesn't." 

"Hmm." The sound is grumpy. Hopeless.

She can't blame him.

Cupping her hand over his, she squeezes his palm and drives on. 

* * *

Ella calls as they're pulling into the crowded visitor lot at USC. 

"Yeah, hi, Ella," Chloe says as she unfastens her seatbelt. "Is this important?" 

"Not for the case, but—"

"Can I call you back, then?" Chloe replies. "We just arrived on campus, and there's some people we want to interv—"

"Did you guys watch the news last night?" 

"Ella, can we, _please_ , talk later? We've got a full schedule today. I want to catch—" Chloe glances at Lucifer. "I can only focus on catching this murderer right now. Okay?"

"I guess, but—"

"Thanks," Chloe says, gathering up her notepad and pen. "I'll call you back when we have a minute."

"But, Chlo—"

Chloe hangs up the phone before Ella can finish. It's a little mean, a little rude—guilt nags—but Ella is a bit of a babbler, and she'll chatter for miles if she's given an inch. Meanwhile, there's only so many working hours in a day, USC's campus is a sprawling center for over 40,000 students, and Chloe really wants to find some of Alastor Blackthorn's coworkers and friends before lunch.

She scans the surroundings quickly, noting a woman standing under a tree by the side of the lot. The woman, wearing jeans, a leather jacket, and a black t-shirt emblazoned with a screaming skull, is squinting strangely back at Chloe, though she doesn't move. Chloe's skin crawls. 

"Ready?" she asks sharply, spooked.

"Indeed," Lucifer says.

He stretches to his full height. In the bald daylight, with his snazzy black suit, he looks like a million dollars. 

"Let's go, then," she decides. 

He falls into step beside her as she hits the lock button on her key fob. 

* * *

"Mr. Blackthorn?" Kelly Mitchell says, her eyes wide and red-rimmed. "Enemies?" Tears streak down her face. "You're kidding, right? Everybody loves"—she coughs—"loved—oh, God, he's really gone?"

"I'm very sorry for your loss," says Chloe. 

The interview with Ms. Mitchell, the president of Tau Tau Chi, had gone the same as all the rest. Alastor Blackthorn was adored by the USC staff and all its students. He'd been on the payroll as an untenured English teacher, and he did instruct a few creative-writing classes, but from what Chloe can glean, most of his work had been focused on spearheading an open secret. An under-the-table support network for campus Greeks. He gave them guidance, and offered the kind of, "Call me at 3 a.m. if you end up drunk at a party and need a ride home; I don't care how you got there, and you don't have to explain," succor only the rarest of parents manage to offer.

Meanwhile, Lucifer projects ennui so thick he could use it for a memory foam mattress when he inevitably falls asleep at their feet. He's doing a good job at not snarking about the woman's grief, at least. 

"You're sure you can't think of anyone who might have wished Mr. Blackthorn harm?" Chloe prods.

Kelly dabs her eyes with a tissue. "I mean, there was that one woman, but …."

"Oh?" Lucifer says, perking up in tandem with Chloe. "Pray tell, what woman was this?"

"I saw her and Mr. Blackthorn talking the other day. Things seemed heated. But not, like, murderously so. Just, you know, worked up?"

"Any anger can become deadly, Ms. Mitchell," replies Lucifer darkly. "I've seen you humans murder over a parking ticket."

Which only seems to distress Kelly more. Chloe gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Ms. Mitchell, do you remember anything about this woman? Her name? What she looked like? Anything that could help us track her down?"

"I don't know," says Ms. Mitchell, sobbing. "I think she was blonde, but … I don't _know_. Poor Mr. Blackthorn."

"Was she petite?" asks Lucifer. "Ample cleavage?"

"I don't know."

"Could she have been a student?" Chloe says.

Ms. Mitchell exhales, sounding flustered as she strains to recall. "Maybe an older one?" 

"So, she wasn't your age."

"No," Ms. Mitchell says, pointing to Lucifer, "more like his." 

"Oh, really." Lucifer's eyes glint like diamonds. "Are you certain?"

"Yeah, like, forties or something. Like … _old_."

A mischievous gleam blooms in his gaze. "You've quite the gift for irony, Ms. Mitchell."

"Do you remember exactly when the argument was?" prods Chloe before Kelly can do more than frown. "Or what it was about?"

"Sometime last week," says Kelly. "I think. And, no, I really don't."

"Where did the fight occur?" asks Lucifer.

"By his office."

Chloe and Lucifer had searched Blackthorn's office already—the dean herself had let them in, providing them with similar assurances that Blackthorn had been loved by all—but the place had been even more Spartan than his living room, like the guy hadn't spent any time in it beyond what the college required of him. 

He'd left behind no obvious clues. 

His bookshelves had been stacked neatly with classics, A-Z. Nothing personal. His calendar and address book had both been unused, his cork board empty save for a dozen multicolored pins, and his campus e-mail account going back for the past two months had only contained innocuous stuff. Even the dean's office hadn't been able to provide any pertinent details. In his employment file, he'd left his emergency contact information blank, and the phone number he'd listed for himself was an out-of-service 540 number. 

_Oh, dear, he should have updated this a long time ago,_ the dean's administrative assistant had said. _We send out yearly reminders!_

So, unless he'd deleted something—Chloe plans to subpoena the college for his server-side e-mail data if they won't fork it over voluntarily, though that will take some time—her only hope in putting a can opener to his recent life and cracking it open, remains in the iPad she found yesterday in Blackthorn's nightstand. 

"Perhaps the security feeds for the building?" suggests Lucifer.

Chloe nods. Another good option. Unfortunately, though, making copies of massive amounts of data and then sifting through it, even with USC's full cooperation, would not be a quick endeavor. She adds that to her mental list as she offers her condolences to Ms. Mitchell again. 

* * *

The woman with the skull shirt is leaning against the hood of the cruiser when they return. She beams and waves when she sees them round the corner. "Are you Chloe Decker?" she asks, reaching underneath the front edge of her jacket and—

"Freeze," Chloe snaps, and the woman freezes, her eyes ticking to the gun holstered at Chloe's hip.

"I'm sorry," the woman says, "I just wanted—"

"Put your hands where I can see them!" 

Lucifer gasps. "Detective, what—" 

The woman complies immediately, raising both splayed hands into the air. The phone she was reaching for clatters to the ground, the screen shattering. "I just wanted a photo with you!" 

Not a stalker demon from Hell. A _fan_. Fuck. _Fuck._ "I'm so sorry," Chloe gushes to the woman, closing the gap between them. "I'm _so_ sorry. I thought you were someone"—some _thing_ —"else."

"It's okay," the woman says shakily. 

"No, it's really not," Chloe says, glancing at the cracked screen of the phone. Fuck. "Can I give you my business card? I'll replace your phone."

Lucifer's panting, too. She'd probably nearly sicced him on the woman. An archangel, who can double as a nuclear bomb. 

Fuuuck. 

At least the command seems to have canceled before any real harm was done to anybody.

The woman, a girl named Melissa Wellspring, shakes off the stressful encounter, seemingly thrilled just to be chatting with the star of _Hot Tub High School_. Lucifer takes a picture for them with Chloe's phone, snarking all the while about the movie, and Chloe e-mails the photo to the address Melissa gives. Melissa leaves happy, with the promise of a new phone, a signed blu-ray, and a Devil's favor to boot.

"I thought she was a demon," Chloe says as she collapses tiredly behind the steering wheel of the cruiser. "I thought she was pulling a knife."

"It's all right, Detective," Lucifer replies softly.

"No! No, it's not. I never want to be one of those cops." 

"I would argue you're very much not. You didn't even draw your gun." 

"Yeah, but I almost made you clobber her."

He strokes her cheek. "You did not. It's not as though I'm forced to comply _immediately_ , you know. Not unless I choose to, or I'm too bloody exhausted to fight with it."

She sighs, leaning into his hand. "Still, I'm sorry."

"It's no matter," he replies. "And for what it's worth, I can identify demons from quite the distance when I'm actively watching for them. With Maze out of town, there'd be no mistaking an ambush, either. You needn't worry."

"Define quite the distance?" 

"Much farther than a scoped rifle's range is long."

"Oh." Well, fuck. "I wish you'd mentioned that sooner."

"Apologies," he replies. "I didn't realize you weren't aware."

No kidding. Swiping her fingers over her hair, she leans back in her seat, letting herself calm down, at last. A slow sigh gusts out of her body. Her heartbeat eases.

"So, what next, Detective?" 

"The, um, custom cock cage, I think." 

"Finally, something _fun_ ," he says, heartening. 

"Just … please … don't be, too …."

"Too _what_ , Detective?" he replies with a perfectly honed _who, me?_ face. 

"Just … you know." She gestures at nothing. " _You_. If you want, I mean."

"Why, I do _not_ , Detective," he gushes melodramatically as he splays the fingers of one hand against his chest. "Who better to show you around a sensualist's superstore than the Devil, after all?"

She cringes. "A … sensualist's superstore?"

"Would you prefer hedonist's hoard?"

"Lucifer …."

"A bondage boutique, then?" 

She counts to ten in her head as she fastens her seatbelt. "Right. Sure. A bondage boutique."

"Well, I don't see you offering any suggestions."

"How about just a store?"

"Or a lecher's lode?" he counters. 

The spark of his humor ignites, making her feel warm. She smiles a little. "Whatever amuses you."

"The look on your face amuses me."

She rolls her eyes in his direction, accenting her movement by turning the key in the ignition. 

"What?" he says, almost a laugh, as the car rumbles to life.

The sun turns his dark irises into rich, brown pools. And his smile, which crinkles his eyes, makes her ache.

"I'm really glad you're here," she allows. 

He beams.

She will _never—_ not in a million years—confess she's slightly intrigued to know what he'd want to buy at this place. And she will _not_ let herself imagine him using the merchandise.

She will not.

* * *

The store Lucifer directs them to on Hollywood Boulevard, less than a mile from Lux, isn't what Chloe would have pictured if someone had ever said, "Hey, let's go to a place where they forge custom chastity belts for men." It's not even what Chloe would have pictured if someone had ever said, "Hey, wanna go shopping for fetish gear?" 

There's no trashy sign outside screaming "XXX Adult Merchandise Here XXX!" like she's seen emblazoned across too many adult-themed stores. Semi-opaque privacy film decorated by geometric shapes covers the windows. When Lucifer pulls open the door for her, a welcoming chime rings through the space. They step inside, immediately greeted with rows of well-lit shelving, and the air smells of … lavender?

"I'll be right out!" calls a man with a bit of a brogue, his voice baritone in timbre. "I just need—" A crash resonates behind a flowing curtain labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY. "Bollocks. Just a moment." 

"Rian Flannery," Lucifer murmurs beside her ear. "Quite the klutz, I'm afraid, but he's an affable fellow. Great at parties. Always brings the best moonshine."

O … kay, then. 

She follows the lavender smell to an array of candles. Shelves of them in varying sizes, from tiny tea lights to the big fat kind meant more for sconces, all arrayed in order like a rainbow. She nudges one of the purple candles, giving Lucifer a questioning look. 

"For setting the mood," Lucifer says. "Scented candles can transport you anywhere, really." 

"Yeah, but … lavender?"

When she thinks of BDSM, she does not think of lavender. At all.

He shrugs, reaching for a white candle the size of his palm. "It depends on the scene one is trying to create." He sniffs the candle, a smile stretching his lips. "The goal is to arouse, after all, and humans have desires as varied as colors on a painter's palette."

She takes a whiff of the candle he grabbed. The scent is something floral. Jasmine, she remembers him saying he likes. Cinnamon. Citrus. He likes scents, too. 

_Oh, yes,_ her mental Lucifer purrs, sprawled across a bed. Her bed. _Quite nice._ He's still wearing nothing but the cage without spikes, though this time a jasmine-scented candle burns on the nightstand by his head. 

"Of course," Lucifer says, "candles are also fun for wax play." 

So much for not imagining him with the merchandise. "Wax … play?"

"A type of pain play, yes. But you wouldn't want scented ones for that." He steps to the left, pointing to the sign above the candles farther down the aisle. The sign reads: SAFETY CANDLES IN ALL COLORS. 

"What are safety candles?" she asks.

"They melt at lower temperatures. Think first degree burns, not third."

"And … that's … fun to you?"

"It's neither fun nor not fun for me," he admits. "Normal candles can't burn my skin, yes?" 

Oh. Right.

"You know, I'd try it with you, if you desired," he says out of the blue, grabbing one of the red safety candles off the shelf, and she almost chokes on her tongue. "We could see if it's fun for me in that context?"

"Right," she says on the coattails of a snort. "Sure."

He brightens. "Really?"

"No, Lucifer! _Not_ really. We're working."

"Well, I didn't mean _now_."

"Or anytime soon?" 

His sudden scowl shuts her up.

"Just … just …." She grabs the candle box from him and stuffs it back onto the shelf. "No."

Before he can reply, she darts away from the candle section, the plush gray carpet muffling her frantic egress. Three steps, and she realizes. This place really is a freaking department store for sex. A lecher's lode, a bondage boutique, a hedonist's hoard, a sensualist's superstore. 

Nearest the candles, she finds essential oils, lubes, a buffet of multicolored condoms and other protection. A whole two aisles are dedicated to vibrators and dildos, each chained to the shelf and put on display like keyboards at a Best Buy or something. 

"You have one of these, I hope," Lucifer says over her shoulder. He picks up a purple boomerang-shaped device about the size of a deck of cards, pulling it toward him until the cord loses slack. "I recommend this one for beginners."

"No," she says. "No, no, no." She snatches the vibrator from him, returning it to the shelf. "And for your information, yes, I do have one."

His eyebrows arch toward his hairline, and his tongue peeks out as he licks his lower lip. He gestures sinuously to the purple vibrator. " _This_ one, specifically? Do tell."

" _No,_ Lucifer." She glares at him. "I am not telling you about my vibrator." 

"As you desire, of course."

The farther she delves into the store, the less "vanilla" things get. Edible props. Restraints. Anal beads. Butt plugs. Gags. Cock rings. Cock cages. Riding crops and whips. Nipple clamps. Enema kits. Electric—

"See anything you like?" Lucifer asks gleefully over her shoulder.

She gapes at one box. The picture on the front contains wires and electrodes and what looks like a voltmeter. "People actually like to shock themselves? For sex?"

"Oh, yes," Lucifer says. _Oh,_ yes! the Lucifer in her mind's eye exults, writhing in bliss for her. "In fact, I do something with a car battery that—"

She holds up a hand, stopping him. "Forget I asked."

"Red," he gasps.

"I didn't mean I literally want you to forget!" she rushes to say. "I just meant I didn't need an answer."

He slumps against the shelving, the box containing the voltmeter thing bumping into the backsplash. His fingers clench. With a soft, breathy moan, he presses his body against the shelf, grimacing.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

She wound him up again.

In a fucking _sex_ store, of all places.

"Sorry," she whispers. "I'm sorry."

He looks away. "I'll be all right."

He sounds about six-thousand miles from _all right_. 

"May I help you, m'dears, or are you just browsing?" calls the same voice from before, as a middle-aged, ginger-haired man steps out from behind the flowing curtain. Freckles dust his face, and warmth fills his green eyes to the brim. His curly red hair is pulled back into a ponytail. He flashes a winning smile at them. "Sorry for the wait. Had a bit of a situation with collapsing cock-ring boxes in the back."

She blinks. "Collapsing what …?" 

"Yes, hello, Mr. Flannery," calls Lucifer, brushing off the sleeves of his jacket as he straightens. Only a brief flinch reveals his discomfort. "Don't mind the Detective. She's a newbie."

The man beams like a sudden sunrise. "Lucifer Morningstar! It's been a while!"

"Yes, I"—Lucifer glances at Chloe, eyes narrowing—"I moved away."

"Well, you've been missed. Janey's dealership is _booming_ now, thanks to you. Here to collect, then?"

Lucifer leans closer, murmuring against Chloe's ear, "His lady friend owns a Harley dealership. I helped them get back in the black, so to speak." To Mr. Flannery, he adds in a louder voice, "Not … precisely." Lucifer squeezes Chloe's shoulder. "Detective Chloe Decker"—he gestures to the shopkeeper—"meet Rian Flannery. Mr. Flannery, Detective Decker."

"Hi, yes, I hope you can help." She flashes her badge as she steps into the center walkway. "We're trying to trace the owner of a … a …." God, she can't even say it without blushing.

"A chastity device, Mr. Flannery," Lucifer chimes in. "A custom-built Kali's Teeth." 

"Oh?" says Mr. Flannery.

Chloe pulls the plastic evidence bag containing the ring from her coat. "Lucifer says it was made here. By … you, I'm guessing? Or a helper?"

"Well, now, let's have a look, shall we?" Mr. Flannery gestures them over to the cash register in the corner. 

The register sits on a long, brightly lit glass case, the surface smudged with fingerprints. Inside the case are padded boxes full of shiny metal rings and barbells arrayed like diamonds at a jewelry store. Dozens of them. Just like the piercings Lucifer had pulled out of himself before his MRI. 

Mr. Flannery pats the counter. "Set it down, m'dear." 

The cock ring thunks against the glass as she relinquishes it. 

"Your mark is near the lock," Lucifer adds.

Mr. Flannery leans down, squinting as he flips the evidence bag over. "Ah, yes," he says, nodding. "Yes, yes. Definitely one of mine." He reaches behind the register, liberating a small magnifying glass from a drawer. After inspecting the cock ring front and back, he types something into the computer. "Hmm."

"Anything?" Chloe prompts.

"Cash purchase, I'm afraid," he says. "Not surprising, given the merchandise. But it unfortunately means I don't have any information about the buyer for you."

Damn. She pulls out photos of the crime scene from her coat pocket, placing them next to the evidence bag. The top page contains a headshot of Alastor Blackthorn pulled from his DMV entry. "Do you recognize this man?"

"No, m'dear. I'm sorry."

Well, it was worth a shot. 

Lucifer reaches for the photos, fanning them out in one swipe. The driver's license photo she'd found is pushed out of frame, replaced by pictures of Alastor Blackthorn, dead, naked, hanging in chains.

"Oh, don't do—" She winces. "It's a little graphic."

"Not to worry," Mr. Flannery says. "Seen plenty worse, I have."

"What about this part?" Lucifer says, pointing to the picture of the Kali's Teeth, still enclosed around Mr. Blackthorn's penis. "Do you recognize this?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, that I recognize, indeed."

"You actually recognize the penis?" Chloe asks.

"Well, I did spend several hours of my life custom-fitting a chastity device for it, you know," replies Mr. Flannery. 

"Did you sell the device to this man?" says Lucifer, pointing at the photo of the hanging corpse. "Or was he accompanied?"

Mr. Flannery looks up at the ceiling. "He was alone, I think."

"Ah," says Lucifer. "Well, that tanks that lead, I suppose."

"You might have some luck at Dominus. I remember him saying he was excited to go there with his new toy."

"Dominus," says Chloe, the name niggling for some reas—oh. "The UV stamp. On the victim."

"Yes, precisely," says Lucifer.

"And, what, you guys are saying this guy bought a custom chastity cage just to wear to a club?"

"Think of it like buying earrings, or a smashing new top."

Which … okay. She can sorta kinda get that. But wow is she out of her element. 

She turns to Mr. Flannery. "Did he say anything else when he bought this thing? Anything about his plans? Anything unusual?"

"No, m'dear, not that I can recall," says Mr. Flannery. "He was a soft-spoken sort."

"Okay." She gathers up the photos and the evidence bag. "Well, Mr. Flannery, thank you so much for your time."

"Of course. Of course." Mr. Flannery gives them a hopeful look. "If you'd like to buy anything on your way out, you should know we're having a sale on sounds. Twenty percent off."

"Sounds?"

Mr. Flannery laughs. "Oh, my. Definitely a newbie in our midst, eh?"

"They're rods, Detective," Lucifer adds helpfully. "Meant for insertion into the urethra. Nixes the possibility for penetrative sex, but they make orgasms feel—"

"That's okay," she tells him quickly. 

Holy shit, she really needs to learn not to ask. 

* * *

A balmy breeze blows as they step out onto the sidewalk. Late afternoon sunlight slants over the low buildings, creating a pocket of shade closer to the store. Cars swish by on the street, and her loose hair swirls in the currents. 

"When shall we visit the club?" Lucifer purrs, leaning sinuously against the glass storefront. A hint of a smile shows the whites of his teeth. "Tonight, then?"

"Oh. Um. No." She digs through her purse for her sunglasses. "We still have plenty of other leads. I'd rather exhaust those, first."

"What other leads?"

"I want to see what forensics can get off that iPad from Blackthorn's apartment." She finds her sunglass case and cracks it open, liberating her shades. "And, of course, there's the e-mails and security footage from the college to go through."

"Hmm."

The snarl of her purse zipper fills the quiet. When she looks up, he's peering back at her with a crushed expression, like someone who expected presents under the Christmas tree, but found only an empty tree skirt, instead. 

"You really want to go to a sex club right now?" she asks incredulously.

He folds his long arms. "Why would I not?"

"Wouldn't it be frustrating for you?"

His eyes narrow. "You think I can't bloody control myself?" 

"That's not even close to what I said, Lucifer."

"Detective, I am older than time," he grouses. "I can bloody well handle an _itch_."

"An itch? You told me it might as well be called agony." 

"When you're expressing a desire, yes," he counters. "Not in the between. Not _now_."

She shifts her purse onto her other arm. "How do you feel right now?" 

Her question breaks his burning stare like a hammer crushes drywall. He looks away, temples dancing as he grinds his jaw. "Frustrated," he admits before huffing out a breath. "And, _yes_ , I'm aware that was your first choice of word."

She grins a little. "Are you saying I'm right?"

"I'm using the word in a different context!" he insists. 

"What context is that?"

"I want …." He reaches with his right hand like he means to stroke her face, only to abort the motion and stuff his fist into his pocket. "Bloody hell." 

He turns away from her, stretching his arms over his head to press against the window. He arches his back, moving his butt toward the street and dragging his torso in the pavement's direction, almost like he's trying to perform a vertical downward dog. Like … he's tense to the point of aching. Like he's in pain. 

Her chest tightens. "Lucifer, seriously … do you want to find someone else?" Someone he can legitimately consent to and blow off some steam with. "Really, I'd understand if—" 

"Stop asking me that."

"Stop asking …?"

"My desires involve _you_ ," he snaps, straightening. "Stop offering to pawn me off to the closest willing body; it's insulting."

Crap. She'd been worried about Stockholm Syn— 

"And before you plunge into the inevitable conclusion like a bloody cliff diver," he continues, interrupting her spiraling thoughts, "let me assure you, I was in this state well before I left for Hell. As I've tried to tell you, the compulsion has only weaponized what was already there. With Lilith, it wasn't bloody like this. I _never_ desired—" He cuts himself off.

Ice creeps through her veins. "Never desired what?"

He doesn't reply, instead huffing out a breath.

"What was it like?" she prods gently.

"What was what like?" 

"You said it wasn't like this with Lilith."

He frowns. "Did I?"

"Yeah," she presses. "Did you remember something?" 

He fumbles a little, breaths tightening in his chest before he vehemently shakes his head. "Bloody … never mind that." 

"Lucif—"

" _No_." The sharp edge of panic in his tone makes her hold up her hands in a placating gesture. His dark gaze intensifies. The soft, desperate, "Please, Detective," he utters is a knife in her gut. "Let's go to the club."

_Please, Detective._

Like, now, he's not just desperate to go with her, he's desperate to erase something by any means necessary.

Taking advantage of this situation would be so easy. There are so many wrong turns to take. Purposefully. Accidentally. The true extent of the obstacle course sprouts in her mental landscape, scaring her with its twists and turns and walls without footholds. 

"I," she says, "really think we should pursue other leads, first." 

He looks like he's holding back a scream. "Are you truly so opposed to jumping down the rabbit hole with me, even for work?"

"I'm not opposed," she counters slowly. "I'm … acknowledging I'm out of my element." 

"All the more reason to _use_ me. As you said before."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"In this moment, I rather wish you had," he replies, his words like midnight. "At least it would have been my choice." And with that, he turns his back on her, shutting down all opportunity for discussion.

The King of Hell has spoken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everybody who takes the time to post feedback!


	20. "Go to Hell!"

He glares through the window at the past-due parking meter beside the cruiser. The Detective had used her dashboard police placard in lieu of payment. 4:37 p.m., reads the blaring digital numerals on the meter. Almost the end of the day—they'll pick up the child and return to the Detective's abode. He'll be able to put a door she won't open between them—he'll be able to have some small, token amount of _space—_ which— 

The car shudders as she climbs in beside him. 

"Lucifer, I can see you're mad at me," she says slowly, "but I don't understand why."

"Really."

"Really, I don't get what happened. Will you talk to me?"

He peers at her over the peak of his left shoulder. "What's the bloody point?"

When she doesn't speak, he turns away again, resting his forehead against cool window glass. 

"Lucifer … I won't force you—I'm _not_ forcing you—but … please?"

He closes his eyes, rubbing his palms along his pantlegs. The Pavarotti-sat-on-him-without-asking feeling is back, constricting his lungs, making his sternum ache. 

"I don't like to be put in boxes," he says. "Detective, I do not _like—_ "

"How did I put you in a box?"

"What does it matter."

"It _matters_ a _lot_ ," she insists. "God, Lucifer, do you think I _enjoy_ upsetting you?"

STOP FEELING UPSET AT HER. 

Her desire lacerates him, slicing down his spine. He stiffens, clutching the window sill with fingers curled into sharp hooks. 

STOP FEELING UPSET. 

He would be complete if he did that—if he gave in. She wants him to. His body _needs_ to. A hitching, tortured burst of air ratchets from his lungs. 

STOP FEELING UP—

"Red!" he gasps, writhing against the seat, unable to escape the lash of heat. 

"Never mind!" she yelps, barely audible over the blood rushing in his ears. 

But it's enough to give him whiplash. NEVER MIND WHAT SHE JUST SAID. A palatable command, in this context. NEVER MI—

It hurtshurts _hurts_ and he 

N E _E D S._

To break free, he surrenders.

For a sickening, lurching moment, his perceptions stretch and blot. Ice douses heat. The ground slips out from underneath him, turning to white waves, pulling him under. Into the undertow. He'll die. He _is_ dying. Drowning. No. No, no, _no_ no.

He B R E _A KS_.

Evaporates.

Reassembles with a missing piece.

Pavarotti resettles on his sternum. 

"I'm sorry," the Detective is saying, her voice cracking. "Lucifer, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to force you to be okay."

"It was an accident," he agrees numbly, incurious about what she carved from him—incuriosity is what she desired. But he remembers the track of the conversation before. He felt the pit in his chest before. The pit that's still there—there again—burgeoning. "You … you ruled out going to the club."

"Okay. And?"

"Because your _pet_ is too bloody sensitive to tolerate the endeavor," he almost snarls, "or so you seem to think, despite my repeated assurances to the contrary."

Another stretch of silence. In the window, the lengthening sunlight frames the sharp angles of his face. His darker countenance stares back at him. His mirror self. 

"Lucifer, I didn't make the choice not to go because you're having issues."

"Didn't you?"

"No," she says, "I made it because there's a bunch of lower hanging fruit to grab—going to a club like Dominus involves some major logistics—and because _I'm_ having issues."

" _You're_ having issues," he scoffs.

"I didn't want to take advantage of you."

"Why the bloody hell _not_?"

"Because as much as I wish it was—not an order—our dynamic right now is _not normal_ , and I can't just proceed as if it is! I can't just … do that."

Frustration boils in his gut. He rubs the bridge of his nose. 

"Also," she continues a little more hesitantly, "I've lived a very vanilla life compared to yours."

He sneers at his reflection. "Well, that's true of anyone, Detective. I'm half the original bloody sin."

"Look, I'm not opposed to going to that club," she replies, not rising to his bait. "Not at all. But let's not decide while we're upset. And … let me work up to it, first, since we've got other options, yeah?" She pauses. A tap-tap-tap noise follows. Like she's drumming her fingers softly against the steering wheel. "I'm … still processing my shock at seeing that store. I mean, oh, my God, that _store_. And that's a normal day for you?"

"Not really," he grumbles. "I usually order online."

Another pause. "Lucifer, I didn't mean to make you feel you don't have a say. I thought we were just doing what we always do."

"What is it you think we always do?"

"Well, I … I tell you where we're going, and you seem happy to go along with whatever I pick." Her tone shifts from hopeful to glum when she adds, "Or, at least … I thought you were."

"Detective, I quite often _am_ ," he assures her, finally peeling himself away from the window. To the contrary of her composed tone, in the past few minutes, her expression has twisted from what had seemed to be gentle amusement into something haggard. "You're the expert at detecting, not I. But in this case, _I'm_ the expert—the sexpert, if you will—and you're … not willing to utilize me."

"Lucifer, that's not true."

"Isn't it? You just said you didn't wish to take advantage."

"Well, I didn't mean like _that_ ," she protests. "Of course I'll utilize your expertise!" 

"Really." He gestures to the fetish store. "You were so reluctant to come here you saved it for last, despite the high probability of it providing information relevant to your investigation—certainly more relevant than vague inquiries at the victim's place of work, anyway—and now you're doing the same bloody thing with Dominus. Yet I've _never_ known you to take the path of least resistance when you think a more difficult course will yield better results."

"I promise it's … it's not because I think you can't handle it, or because I don't value your experience."

"You're truly that horrified by fetish play?" he asks.

"I'm _not_ horrified," she says. "There's nothing horrifying about people having consensual fun in different ways than I'm used to." She tilts her head, regarding him. "There's nothing horrifying about _you_ doing that. Just"—she takes a shuddering breath—"it's a _lot_ for me to take in all at once, yeah?"

The truth as she knows it. His hackles lower.

"And I'm sorry I made you feel like my sl—my subordinate," she continues. "You're not. You're my _partner._ "

 _Lucifer, you are_ not _a fantastic listener_ , Dr. Linda echoes in his head like a gong.

He looks at his lap, loosing a self-deprecating, breathy laugh. He'd snapped, hadn't he? Been exactly what the Doctor had accused him of being.

Lived down to expectations, like he always does. 

Of _course_ the Detective is uncomfortable with the direction their investigation seems to be taking. Tolerant, yes—remarkably so—but she's _never_ been comfortable with witnessing overt sexuality, vanilla or otherwise. And this case is suggesting they jump headfirst into a banana-split sundae with all the fixings. 

"It … seems rather silly of me to take offense, in retrospect," he admits. 

"It's not silly," she assures him. "We're in a weird place, and I wasn't exactly transparent with my reasoning."

"No, but I know your heart, and I shouldn't have leapt to …." He shakes his head. "Please, Detective, will you forget I said—"

"Done," she's quick to reply before amending hesitantly, "… Answer a question for me, though?"

"What question?"

"Is there something else … wrong? Something more than you feeling voiceless?"

"Why would you think that?"

"Because, up 'til now, even though you've vented, you've been pretty careful about not directing your frustrations specifically at me." She gives him a regretful look. "I guess this just felt … more personal?"

More personal, indeed. "Detective, I …." What to even say.

"And, really, I'm not trying to begrudge you your need to vent," she continues. "You deserve space to do that."

"As do you," he interjects. "This is difficult for both of us."

"Yes, but"—her gaze searches his—" _is_ that all it is? Things being difficult?" 

He fidgets. How she always makes him feel like a twitterpated, tongue-tied fledgling, he'll—

"You can tell me anything, yeah?" 

Bloody …. He sighs. "It's only … I very much desire to attend that club with you."

"Right"—she nods—"for the investigation."

"Irrespective of the investigation." 

Several cars swish by on the street before she seems to gather up her thoughts, reorganizing them with the new information he's provided. 

"Okay," she says calmly. "Why?"

"Because it's my fantasy."

"What is?"

"Going to Dominus. With you. I dream of it."

She blinks. "You … do?"

"Before Eve. During Eve. After Eve. Now." He laughs unhappily. "I … yes, I do, Detective. All the bloody time."

"Really?"

"As I keep telling you, Detective, my fantasies involve _you_. All of them. Of course I'll leap at the chance to partake."

"But … this would be for work," she says, frowning. "Not pleasure."

"Well, any port in a storm, you know. I can make work fun."

"Okay." She settles back in her seat with a dumbstruck expression. Her coat rustles as she folds her arms, rubbing her biceps. "Okay, I … did not expect that."

"Detective, I'm the Devil. Surely, you've had an inkling of my proclivities? It's not as though I've been shy about expressing—"

"No. No, you're right. I—" She stares at the steering wheel like her brain momentarily disconnected the call between it and her body. "Wow."

"Is it a dealbreaker?" he asks tensely. When she doesn't answer, he feels compelled to add, "It's not a dealbreaker for me, of course. Truly, I'm amenable to anything you des—"

"No."

"Of course," he rushes to say, gut sinking. "Forget I said—"

"I meant it's not a dealbreaker." 

His world stops. "… Really?"

"Really." She dares a shy, warm glance at him. Her eyes are beautiful in the light. Beautiful always. Pleasant heat unfurls through his body. "Just … let me process, first, yeah?"

He tugs at his collar. "I can be patient." 

"It's just … your sexuality has always been this thing safely on the sidelines for me. Something notable to glance at occasionally while I'm out on the field, solving cases. But … it's pretty much the soccer ball now, and—"

He waves dismissively at her. "Yes, yes, I get it."

"Sorry." More shy smiling. This time, wider.

"You realize, though, if we're to follow this metaphor to its sordid conclusion, you're kicking me in my so-called ball."

She snorts. "Yeah … yeah, I … really didn't think that one through."

"Honestly, what is _with_ you ladies liking CBT?"

"Do I want to know what that is?"

"Given this conversation," he says, suggestively licking his lower lip for her, "I believe, 'no,' is the safest wager."

His theatrics are rewarded with one of her patented eye rolls. His brain feels fuzzy in a good way. The ache of previous anger and arousal is gone. For the first time in recent recollection, he isn't tired. He's just … happy.

She makes him happy.

Not because she commanded it, but because she could, and yet she doesn't. Wouldn't ever. Couldn't bloody fathom it on her worst day, even in her worst way.

She's willing to see him. 

All of him. 

The Devil. 

No matter what. 

She brings out truths in him he _likes_.

"Detective?" he says softly.

"Yeah?"

"What's _your_ fantasy?"

"I can't tell you that," she says. "It'd just … it'd hurt you right now."

"Am I in it?"

Her shoulders curl defensively like she's expecting to be met with teasing, or a smirk, but he isn't smirking, and he isn't teasing. 

"Please, tell me," he says. "What do you desire?"

She sucks in a breath. He cups her chin, tipping her gaze toward his. She stares at him, her eyes searching, almost pleading. As he strokes her jawline, the soft silk of her skin slides under the pad of his thumb. 

"Please," he repeats. "I wish to know."

She rests her hand over his, staying the motion of his palm as she clutches it to her face. Her eyes close, and she inhales deeply against his skin. "Lucifer, I want you to stay." 

His euphoria crashes like a bombed out plane. 

"That's it," she says, sounding small. "That's my fantasy."

"Detective, I—"

"Please," she continues, interrupting him. When she opens her eyes again, they're wet, and this time when she blinks, tears streak down both cheeks in tandem, leaving glistening tracks. "Please, don't go back to Hell when this is over. At least, not permanently. You could commute or … take shifts. Work part-time. Anything. I'll take _anything_ with you as long as it's not nothing. One weekend a year. _Please_ , I … oh, God, I can't believe I'm begging. I promised myself I wouldn't." She sniffs, pulling away from him. "This is so humiliating." 

His heart cleaves. He _understands_ humiliation, now, after his latest Hell tour. "Please, don't be ashamed," he tells her. "You've said nothing I wasn't already thinking on the balcony." 

"But," she laments, "you seemed so … placid." 

"Why do you think I left so bloody quickly?" He clears his throat, trying to keep it from closing completely. "If I'd stayed another moment, I would _never_ have left, and I would _not_ have been placid."

"Oh." They sit in heavy silence for a moment before she claps her hands against her lips, turning to him with a gasp, only for her stress to wash away again in another heartbeat. "You're not even twitching. Why are you not …?" 

"Because it doesn't hurt. Not physically, anyway."

"But I … told you to stay," she says breathlessly. "Does this mean you'll stay?"

Her hope carves him up like a knife. "Perhaps, I can't be bound beyond the extant boundaries of the compulsion." 

"Oh." She sounds numb.

He stares out the windshield at a young couple strolling hand in hand down the sidewalk. They're laughing. Bumping hips. Two suns, revolving around each other. Just being, without care for their surroundings. Something sharp and hot scoops out his insides. "Detective, that's really all you fantasize about? Me staying?"

"Yeah."

He turns to her again. "There's … truly nothing else?"

"Right now?" Her lower lip trembles, but she tamps the motion, swiping at her mouth with her palm. "No. I'm … I have a hard time thinking farther than that anymore."

"Detect—" He takes a breath. "Chloe." The word tastes strange but lovely on his tongue. " _Chloe_ , you've my word, if the compulsion ever breaks, I won't leave permanently without giving you time to speak. I won't leave _you_ until you're satisfied there's no other solution."

A grieving hiccup catches in her throat. She rubs her eyes. "Sorry if I don't exactly find that comforting."

"A lie would be worse."

"I _know_. I—"

Static crackles over the radio before dispatch cuts in, mumbling something about a four-fifteen something something at an address in Central LA. The Detective rubs her eyes as she listens. "That's"—she coughs, still grieving—"only a mile from here, and it's on the way to Trixie."

"What the bloody hell's a four-fifteen?" 

"An unspecified disturbance."

Hmm. "Not our normal fare, is it?"

"No, but we're already here." She peers at him, her glistening eyes hopeful, her eyebrows raised in question. "Could be a nice change of pace?"

 _So could Dominus_ , he barely keeps himself from saying. But he promised patience. And they need to escape this bloody car for a bit. He could swear it's booby trapped—have a seat inside, and there _will_ be an unpleasant talk. 

"Well, don't let me stop you, Detective," he decides with a hollow grin. "I've nowhere else to be."

Nowhere he _wants_ to be, anyway.

In that respect, the compulsion is a comfort, assuring him Hell is far away, well out of reach. He closes his eyes, relaxing into the seat as the Detective exchanges words with dispatch over the radio. 

"Ten four," she announces once she's satisfied. "Unit Eight-Three-One responding. ETA: Fifteen minutes. Out."

* * *

The address turns out to be an alley Lucifer had driven past countless times. A narrow, dark junction of grease-and-gum-spotted pavement between a dry cleaner and taco shop. The surrounding buildings are ramshackle, beat down by the relentless assault of sun, smog, and sediment. Four large garbage bins block the alley from view.

The Detective drives past and pulls the cruiser into the next alley down, about two blocks away. After parking beside the brick wall of a martial arts studio, she places her police placard onto the dash once again, and then checks her face in the mirror. 

"You look fine with your sunglasses on," he tells her. "Nothing too smudged. Only your eyes are red."

She sniffs and nods. "Yeah."

Lucifer opens the passenger door of—BANG!

"Now, _this_ sounds familiar," he muses.

"What does?" the Detective says.

BANG! The sound resonates, distant. Not ordnance, but a collision of metal with metal. Like a car crash. Over, and over. "You don't hear that?" he asks.

BANG!

She tilts her head. "No?" 

"I swear, you humans are deaf."

They leave the cruiser behind, the Detective locking the car doors by aiming the key fob over her shoulder as they walk away. 

BANG! 

"That one, I heard," she says. "You don't think it's another de-gloved soul, do you …?"

"I'm not certain what to think. Let's see, shall we?"

The banging continues, crescendoing like a burlesque drum routine as they approach the alley. The stench wallops Lucifer when they're a block away. Cloying. Unnatural. Unholy. 

Revulsion screams through his body. Enough to make him cringe, were he not in control of his faculties, but he is. He vents his need to grimace into toying with his absent ring. 

_Why do you wear this, my king? I've always wondered._ Lilith's fingers are cold as she takes it from him. Cups it in her hand. Strokes the gleaming onyx setting. _Is it powerful?_

He doesn't want to answer. He tries not— 

The sound of dry heaving drags him through a long tunnel, back to the now. They've reached the mouth of the alley. "Oh, God," the Detective croaks as she fumbles for her wintergreen tube with one hand, her other hand clapped over her face. "I still don't know how you stand that." She slathers the mint-scented gel under her nose. "Can you see a"—BANG!—"soul?"

His cavernous throne room sprawls under a giant chandelier made from polished obsidian shards like stalactites. BANG! The chittering crowds ring the edges of the floor, all laughing—jeering, stomping their feet in encouragement—at his pain. 

"Lucifer?"

The image dissolves. "Sorry?"

She wraps her hand around his wrist, giving him a squeeze. "You okay?"

He stares at her hand, gripping him. His arm seems like someone else's, far away. "Yes. Yes, I'm …." His heart is pounding again. He focuses on the warmth of her skin. The pleasantness of her touch. Not like Lilith's icy grasp. "Yes. Fine." 

He turns toward the alley. 

Loose tendrils like sunlit spiderwebs cascade from a brilliant whorl the size of a rosebush. The sight sears his retinas. This … isn't right. This shouldn't _be_ here.

"Yes, Detective," he says. "I see a soul."

The whorl contracts like a condensing cloud. The spiderwebs all spasm in unison. Pain. Confusion. Both shockwaves of emotion roll out from the epicenter, the force lifting the dumpster lid six inches before crashing it down again. BANG!

He steps into the shade of the alley. 

The Detective follows behind him.

The air chills like a polar vortex. When they round the garbage bins, more of the picture unfurls for them. A small pile of soiled blankets and dirty rags resides at the "feet" of the soul, and underneath the wrongwrongWRONG smell of something that Should Not Be, he discerns stale urine. Excrement. 

"Humans can be so bloody foul," he mutters. 

The only question remaining is whether thishuman was a victim of that foulness, or a perpetrator. Or both. Perhaps, she'd been complicated.

"Will you help him—her?—like you helped Alastor?" the Detective asks softly. 

"Her," he confirms with a nod. "And yes."

"You can tell without a body?"

"Genitalia is not gender, Detective," he scoffs. "You humans fixate on such … irrelevant minutiae."

"Right. Yeah. That's … fair."

He tips his head toward the street. "At least, the smell has scared off potential onlookers." 

"I'll keep lookout," she decides, trotting back to the alley's entrance, her boots clomping on the stained pavement. She looks left. Then right. "All clear."

He unfurls his wings. Another BANG! from the disoriented soul mutes the rustle of his feathers as they shift out of warm ether into cold reality. The bracing shock of transition hits him like an ice bath, and he can't help but pause, reorientating. 

"You okay?" the Detective calls behind him.

"Hmm. Yes."

He places his palms against the shivering edges of light. The soul calms just from his touch, vibrating in place instead of flailing. And then he Speaks to her.

* * *

He stands in the middle of the sidewalk, his fingers steepled in front of his chest, his nose tipped toward the sun. _Azrael, please, talk to me_ , he prays. _Tell me, what is going on?_

And then he waits. 

But for what feels like his millionth plea since they'd found the "ghost" of Alastor Blackthorn on Tuesday, Lucifer receives only silence. His lower lip twitches as he fights with his impatience. There are abundant explanations for her absence, many of them not implicating instability of the universe. What niggles is the fact that Amenadiel's gone, too, at the same bloody time, immediately after expressing a desire to go to Hell. What _niggles_ is the fact that _all_ of this has roughly coincided with Lucifer's mysterious ill fortune. 

Dread coagulates in his chest.

Amenadiel wanted to go to Hell. Azrael spends time in Hell to make deliveries. Hell-adjacent is her status quo. Lucifer and the Detective have every reason to think Lucifer, King of Hell, had bloody well been in Hell until last week. 

Is Hell the Typhoid Mary in this equation? 

Is there an equation at all?

 _Look, Azrael, I was willing to offer the benefit of the doubt,_ he snaps, _but it's clear to me something is amiss, and I bloody well need to know what. Stop pissing around and tell me._

But … nothing.

_Amenadiel, if you answer no other prayer from me, please, answer this one. Please, brother. Are you well? Dr. Linda is quite concerned. As am I._

Nothing.

He grinds his teeth, widening his focus.

 _Will_ someone _please inform me what the bloody hell is going on? I know I've … I've not precisely been a team player in the past, but I'm here now._

Nothing.

 _Hello?_ he screams into Creation. 

Nothing.

Not one bloody sibling responds. Not _one_.

The Detective sighs beside him, and he opens his eyes. Sharp spears of setting sun make his pupils constrict. At some point, she'd retreated, using his taller stature to shade herself from the dazzle in the west. Now, as cars swish past on the street behind him, buffeting his back with warm bursts of air, she bites her lip and stares at her phone with a pensive expression.

"Trouble?" he says.

"According to dispatch, the paramedics picked up the body of a homeless woman early yesterday morning," she replies, brushing flyaway hair out of her face. "She must have died in the alley the night before."

"Yes, I surmised as much."

"So … we'll say roughly forty-eight hours between time of death and the banging noises, assuming the noise complaints to police roughly coincide with the start of the banging. Which, give or take a few hours, means Alastor died late on Saturday or early Sunday, not Monday night." She tucks her phone back into her pocket. "Any luck?"

"No. Nobody is bloody _answering_ me. But, of course, why would they? I'm the bloody black sheep."

Her mouth twists briefly into a half frown half grimace before she steps closer to him. Holds out her arm, her intentions clear. "This okay?"

"Yes."

She steps into his orbit, into his space, sliding her arms around his waist. Her cheek presses against his sternum, and he reflexively clasps his own arms around her. She inhales deeply of him before continuing in a soft voice, "It's _their_ loss, you know. Them not talking to you."

His heart twists. "You always see the best in everyone."

"I don't have to look very hard with you."

He kisses the top of her head. "I don't suppose you've heard of any new disasters?"

"I checked while I was on hold." She slips her hands into his back pockets, holding him close. "Nothing."

"I … can't help but wonder if all of this is connected. Amenadiel. My predicament. These wayward souls. Azrael."

She looks up at him. "You don't think it's a coincidence?"

"It's quite a lot to happen all at once," he replies, shaking his head. "Detective, history has a history of being rather boring in the grand scheme of things. That's why Dad was so often in the 'garage.'" Lucifer stares into space. "Why I rebelled."

She doesn't speak. 

"Or perhaps I'm reaching," he continues. "Perhaps Amenadiel has resettled into the boredom of Silver-City living, Azrael has decided once more I'm not worth speaking to, my compulsion is my punishment for thinking I could ever change, and these lost souls are some random aberration that will resolve itself in due time. Tragic but independent events."

"Lucifer, if your gut is telling you something is wrong, I think you need—if you want—to trust it." She pats her chest. " _I_ trust it."

"Yes, well, what does trusting my viscera accomplish, precisely, beyond magnifying our angst? We can't do anything. You're human, and I'm trapped inside a three-block radius." Or … is he? Said viscera sink into the soles of his shoes. 

"Is there any way we can rule out the idea you're reaching?" the Detective asks. "Process of elimination?"

"If Amenadiel and Azrael are, in fact, holed up in the Silver City, laughing at us," he replies, "I've no way to confirm that, no."

"Are you, like, just disowned? Or are you physically barred from going back to check?"

"Both. They stripped me of my access when I was cast down, and I've no weapons that would enable me to breach the gates by force."

She nods, saying nothing.

"Returning to Hell," he admits slowly, "is perhaps an option. My doing so may shed light on this situation."

The Detective's brow creases. "But … you can't. You're stuck. You said so."

"In truth, as even you have said, we haven't directly tested it."

She turns away from him to look through the window of the taco shop. The space is empty, save for one young man blithely dumping what looks to be an entire bottle of Tapatío onto his enchiladas. Mid-shake of the bottle, he glances up, his eyes widening when he realizes he's being watched through the front window. The Detective grabs Lucifer's wrist and drags him to the alley with the "ghost" he'd put into torpor. 

"Detect—"

"Oh, God," she chokes out as the smell hits her human olfactory organs once again. Her fingers clench spasmodically, and she continues tugging him down the street, toward the cruiser, until, at last, they reach a wall that isn't comprised solely of windowpanes. Her panting fills the quiet. "Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to lug you around like a shopping bag."

He grins. "By all means, lug away, Detective."

"Really?"

"Is that not our usual modus operandi?" he says with a shrug. "And you've made freedom of movement a priority for me above all else, so you're not forcing me to comply."

"I know, but you've … been a little weird about touch since you came back."

"We were already touching. It's quite all right."

Her doubting gaze sweeps him head to toe. "Look, it's … it's only two souls, so far. Just two." 

That they've found, at least. His mind invariably drifts to images of the Titanic, and one "small" iceberg, barely breaking the surface of the frigid ocean. But the sudden desperation-slash-hopefulness in the Detective's tone screams to him like a warning klaxon, and he keeps his mouth shut. 

"That … doesn't seem so bad yet," she continues, not even sounding like she's convinced _herself,_ let alone him. "Has Heaven ever stopped answering prayers before?"

"I wouldn't know," he answers carefully. "Excluding this week, I've … not precisely been chatty with them since I Fell."

Yet … excluding this week, Amenadiel has always answered, except when something was _very_ wrong. Dad had answered as well, the singular time Lucifer had stooped to asking. The pit in his stomach widens to a chasm.

"Is … having a few de-gloved souls on Earth actually dangerous?" the Detective asks.

"Beyond the potential for injury when humans brave the smell and noise at just the right moment," he says, trying to keep his tone even, "I don't see how it could be. Not at such a low concentration. They're not … _here_ , Detective. I mean, they are. But they aren't. They certainly can't interact with intention, good or bad. Regardless, I seem to be able to calm them." For now.

"So … we can afford to wait and see." 

He inclines his head. "If you desire."

As it flies by, a car with a massive subwoofer blares music that makes his chest vibrate and his ears hurt. The Detective's gaze shifts toward the sky like she's pleading with … someone. Something. She swipes her fingertips under her sunglasses.

"Detective," he soothes, "nothing will happen here without your say. I won't fly off to Hell if you think it unwise. Literally, I _can't_."

"But," she asks in a small voice, "do you _want_ me to let you?" 

A weight settles on his sternum. The idea of returning to Hell turns his mouth dry. Makes him cold to the marrow of his bones. 

"Detective," he rasps, heart galloping, "what if Lilith did to them what she did to …?" _Me_. He can't say me. Me means his wispy recollections are really real. Me means he's a victim. "What if they're compelled like I am, and I'm the only one lucky enough to have escaped? What if I left them behind?" He couldn't bear it.

"How could Lilith have gotten all three of you?" 

"I don't bloody _know_. I don't even know how she got _me_ , but clearly, it's possible, because here I stand, gotten."

"Okay, so … we have to rule it out if we can," the Detective says calmly, following his lead. "Like any good detective would. It's our duty as … as public"—she glances at him, squinting—"public-ish servants."

He doesn't speak, doesn't feel able. He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to _go_. But how can he in good conscience not—

"Right now?" she adds, her voice quavering.

The first time he opens his mouth, nothing but a rough croak leaps out. He clears his throat, stuffing his shaking hands into his pockets. "This would only be for fact finding, of course. Just a quick in and out, and Bob's your uncle." He's not certain who he's reassuring. He tries to smile, but it hurts his face. "I'll be back before you blink. Benefits of bizarro time differentials."

She hugs him again, snapping shut around him like a bear trap. 

_You're mine,_ Lilith says, wrapping her arms around him from behind. _All mine._

He sucks in a breath, petrifying in her arms. 

"Shit, sorry." 

Even as she snaps away from him, he pushes her backward. He has will and wit. He can defend himself. 

"Lucifer?"

Reality sharpens again. He's holding the Detective at arm's length, but not letting her loose.

"… Detective."

"Yep." She laughs nervously, holding up her hands. "Just me."

Her body is warm. And clothed. And she isn't groping him. Or stroking him. Or saying deranged, megalomaniacal things. She isn't acting possessive over her prized exotic pet. She's only … Chloe Jane Decker. The woman who—for some bloody reason—loves the Devil. Loves _him_.

"It's all right," he manages, releasing her. "I'm … I'm all right." He takes a breath. Counts to three. Blows it out. "I'm all right now." 

"You're sure?"

He nods, closing the gap, embracing her, instead. "Yes. Apologies."

"My fault," she murmurs. "I didn't telegraph." 

"Have I hurt your shoulder?"

"Nope. Just startled me. You're quick when you wanna be."

He takes another breath. Counts to three. Lets it out. Like Dr. Linda said. It … helps.

"I love you," she whispers. 

He rests his chin against her crown, and loses track of things for a while. The street. The traffic. The fading sunlight. All of it dims except for her. 

"Ready to try this?" she says eventually. "I think if we wait much longer, I'll lose my nerve."

No. "I suppose we should, or I might lose mine as well."

"You're sure?"

 _No_. "Do it."

She nods. And nods again. And again. "Lucifer, I—" Her voice is thick with grief. "I-I want you to check Hell for Amenadiel and Azrael, and then come back."

The pain is a nuclear bomb exploding inside of him. Unspecified need without a path for resolution. His groin tightens. He _burns_. A choking groan squelches out of him as his knees give way. He sinks to the ground, his body slapping against crumbling brick. 

"Red," he croaks. " _Please,_ red."

And then she's yelling, "Stop, I changed my mind!" from far away. "I changed it. Stop. Stay here."

The pain ceases. _Fuck_.

"Try"—he sags, panting—"try a simpler command. The wording might be finicky."

"Lucifer, I—"

"Just bloody test it, will you?" he snaps. "Be done with it alre—"

"Go to Hell!"

The pain crashes into him again like a runaway semi. He coughs, spittle dribbling down his chin. He needs. He _needs_. He needs … something. And yet nothing. And everything. All at once. He's on the razor's edge with no way to push beyond it. His fists clench, and he fights the empty urge to rut with thin air. "Red!" 

"I mean, stay with me, instead!"

"Oh," he groans, relaxing. The world spins around him like a Dreidel, and he can't quite reorientate. Can't quite catch his breath. Everything aches, and his head is burning bright once more with porny pictures. 

The Detective. Naked. The Detective, naked, straddling him. The Detective, naked, straddling him as she cups his— No, no, _no_. Not. Right. Now. Bloody hell. 

He forces himself to stare at the nearest car—a red Miata with the top cranked down—parked along the side of the street. "Well, I suppose that answers that." 

Without ambiguity, he's trapped on Earth.

Trapped in the not knowing.

Trapped with her. 

If only he could decide whether to shout for joy or crumble in frustration.

 _I love you,_ his mind's-eye Detective says, rubbing up against him. _I choose—_

"Bloody hell!" he snaps. "Be quiet, daddamnit." He glances at the real Detective, whose mouth is forming a perfect little "o" as she stares at him. "Not you. Apologies."

"I guess we just have to wait and see how this shakes out," the Detective says as she lowers herself to the pavement beside him. "Can I put my arm around your shoulder?"

"Please, don't. I'm—" Stuck with an arousal dial cranked to eleven. _Fuck_.

"That's okay." A ghost of a smile fleets across her face. "We can just sit here." She pulls out her phone. "I'll tell Trixie we'll be late."

"Did you know Charlie Chaplin lost a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest?" he blurts.

"Huh?"

"I'm trying to think of incredibly boring facts that have nothing to do with shagging you."

She frowns at him. Shrugs as she puts her phone back in her pocket. And then says, "Code two-forty is assault. Two-forty-two is battery. Two-forty-six is shots fired in a dwelling. Does that help?"

"Oh, yes, that's incredibly boring. Tell me more, Detective." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A hearty thanks to everybody who takes the time to comment :)


	21. "a merry chase"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everybody who takes the time to leave comments. Seriously. Sorry my replies have been shorter as of late—I've got a massive nightmare going on at work, so my spoon count is critically low by the time I get home each day—but rest assured you guys are lighting up my life right now :)

_Ghosts_ , Chloe types onto her laptop keyboard.

Google churns out a list of links, the first of which is a Wikipedia article about ghosts. Not helpful. The next several search results are all news articles talking about why people believe in ghosts, and what the speculated science is behind ghost sightings. 

"Because the Angel of Death got kidnapped or something," Chloe grumbles under her breath. "Obviously." These hits are generic and useless.

"Yes, I don't think you'll find Azrael on Google, darling," Lucifer says tiredly. 

"Who's Azrael?" chirps Trixie. 

"Someone you'll not meet until you're at least a hundred-six if I've anything to say about it, which … is actually in doubt at the moment, so do be careful around sharp objects, heavy machinery, and ledges."

Trixie laughs, her pencil pausing. "You're so weird."

Lucifer doesn't comment except to sniff. 

He's not-dozing on the recliner again, his eyes open to bare slits like a resting cat, his body cocooned by a blue snuggie. He'd come downstairs after a shower and some alone time, and they'd all eaten leftover Chinese food for dinner. Trixie has a tower of homework she's been churning through at the coffee table, while Chloe searches for answers from the couch. Not that answers are forthcoming.

_Ghosts in Los Angeles,_ Chloe tries next, but that turns up useless results, too. Nothing but lists of all the haunted places in Los Angeles, like the Suicide Bridge in Pasadena, and Picnic Table 29 in Griffith Park. Not helpful, not helpful.

_Recent ghost sightings_ nets her a bunch of random crap from questionable sources like the _National Enquirer_. "There's a ghost in my house," claims Tom Gallivant, movie star. "He keeps turning on the television." 

_Recent ghost sightings in Los Angeles_ just dumps her back to the lists of haunted places. 

None of this is useful. 

_Angel of death,_ she types on a whim. She's unsurprised to find the Wikipedia article at the top of the stack. Wikipedia seems to be running a racket on search-result indexing. She _is_ surprised when she clicks, though, and the link goes directly to a page about Azrael, which isn't a name she'd ever heard before Lucifer mentioned it. 

"Huh," she mutters, skimming. "I did find her on Google."

"Pardon?" asks Lucifer.

"Sorry. Joking. I didn't know Azrael is one of the main archangels in Islam." In Chloe's panic reading on religion last year, she'd focused primarily on the Devil.

"Most religions have a little bit right, and quite a lot wrong," says Lucifer. "It's all a dreadful game of telephone, if you ask me. Gabriel's not terribly articulate to begin with, and then you have humans twisting his words more with every new translation. It was bound to get out of hand eventually. I mean, really. Considering he's supposed to have some bloody brilliant Plan, Dad didn't plan that well."

"Gabriel?" Chloe echoes, looking up.

"Yes, Gabriel. The Messenger. Surely, you've heard of him?"

"Yeah, sorry, just." Wow. "You talk about it so casually—it's hard to wrap my head around, sometimes."

"Is Gabriel fun like you?" Trixie asks. "We should invite him over sometime."

A derisive laugh barks from Lucifer's lips. "That'll be the bloody day."

Chloe keeps reading. At the bottom of the page, under, "See Also," there's a link for Charon, which makes her think of Ella's enthusiastic babbling at the crime scene. Huh. Surreal, now, knowing specifically what the right and wrong bits are. Surreal having "Hades" borrow her favorite snuggie to doze in her recliner.

Her work phone vibrates, an unknown number flashing across the screen, but unlike with her personal phone, unknown numbers usually mean someone from law enforcement is calling. 

"Detective Decker," she answers.

Static flares across the line before a woman with a soothing alto voice says, "Hello, Detective Decker, this is Detective Paula Holtman with the Columbus PD. How are you this evening?"

"Good, thanks," Chloe says cautiously as Lucifer perks up, too. "You?"

"I'm doing well, thank you," replies Detective Holtman. "Listen, I'm calling regarding a person of interest, John Constantine. I heard through the grapevine"—thank you, _thank you,_ Agent Adeboye—"that you're looking for this man also?"

Chloe shoves her laptop aside, rising from the sofa like a snapped spring. "One sec; lemme go somewhere private. My kid's home." 

"Sure."

Trixie doesn't look up from her sprawl of math problems as Chloe vacates. Business as usual for a cop's kid. The recliner squawks as Lucifer pulls the lever, lowering the footrest. 

Chloe doesn't hear him follow, but as she's turning toward the bedroom doorknob, he's there, inches from her face, eyeing her intently. She steps aside to let him through before shutting the door. He folds his arms, leaning against the wall as she sits on the edge of her mattress.

"Okay, I'm good now," she says into the phone. "So, you're looking for John Constantine, too?"

"Yes," says Holtman, "he approached me a few weeks ago, warning me off a case I've been working on. Approached me again a few days later. Then disappeared."

"He approached you in Columbus, Ohio?" Chloe says. 

"Yep."

"Do you remember the dates?"

"October 17 and 22nd."

Chloe clutches the phone. The second date is barely more than two weeks ago. "What case was this?"

"Serial killer," says Holtman. "Gruesome. Bloody. Never seen anything like it, and I've been doing this job nearly thirty years. This Constantine guy told me I didn't understand what I was dealing with, and to back off, or I was going to die. Said to leave it to the experts. Frankly, I don't know what experts he could have meant." Her voice takes a sharp turn toward sarcastic. "I would think _I'm_ the expert at catching killers. But what do I know."

Chloe shoots a look at Lucifer. He doesn't offer any input. He's still—a lion waiting in tall grass for a chance to pounce. 

"What about your case?" Holtman asks. 

"Yeah," Chloe says, "I have a kidnapping victim—no memory of the event itself, but he's convinced John Constantine might have some answers, and I'd like to pursue every potential lead."

"Why does he think John Constantine can help?"

"They have a history. Their social circles sometimes intersect."

"Well, does he have any idea why Mr. Constantine would be sniffing around my crime scenes?"

Lucifer takes a breath, opening his mouth, but Chloe holds up a hand. Detective Holtman doesn't need to know Chloe _lives_ with the kidnapping victim. "I'll ask him next time we talk," she says. "I have an interview scheduled tomorrow."

"Sounds good. Please, let me know."

"Absolutely," Chloe says. "Listen, is there any chance you could send me your case file? I don't know how yet, but it might help me."

"I'll send you a link," Holtman replies. 

They exchange a few more pleasantries before hanging up. Chloe checks her secure e-mail through her phone, making sure she got the link. She did. The pictures load slowly on her tiny phone screen, line by line, pixel by pixel, as Lucifer stalks to the bed and sits beside her.

"So," she asks, "why _would_ John Constantine be poking around a murder investigation?" 

"Because he thinks the murderer is a human armed with magic," replies Lucifer, "or isn't human at all."

"You mean like a demon? Or is there more supernatural wuwu I don't know about?"

"Not on this Earth," he says, which makes her shake her head like she's shivering. Multiverse stuff again. He speaks of it so casually; it's mind boggling. "Vampires, werewolves, all of that—pure myth here. Magic endures, barely, but that's all."

"So, you do mean like a demon."

The pictures finish loading. All she sees are smears of shining red before he snatches the phone away, zooming in, scrutinizing. "Yes," he decides, "a demon. The meticulous knife work in these photographs suggests a pre-Earth Mazikeen—an avid sadist without boundary or restraint."

He returns the phone to her. She scrolls, her stomach roiling at the familiar pale squiggles of torn viscera and blood-stippled, decaying flesh. "Maze does … _this_?"

"She did," he admits with a small nod. "Love tempered her considerably. There is no love in Hell."

Maze's offhanded comments about stabbing things cut into Chloe's awareness like they're knives themselves. "My sometimes babysitter … does this."

" _Did_ , yes. In Hell. With other demons," Lucifer enunciates. "She would never hurt your child. She's quite judicious on Earth, actually." 

Judicious, he says. 

_Maze_.

But this seems like a conversation for later, when she needs a babysitter. Shakily, Chloe keeps scrolling, reading the particulars. The case has no known suspects. No point of commonality connects any of the victims—they've found twenty so far. Bodies had been piling up since July. _July_.

"You," Chloe says, "outlawed possession, right?" 

Lucifer nods. "I did."

"Do other angels ever take demons to Earth?"

"That presumes other angels venture into Hell in the first place, which they do not. Azrael and her helpers never go beyond the Gates. Amenadiel, perhaps, but …."

"But what if you're right, and Azrael and Amenadiel are compelled? We know Amenadiel's been missing longer than this demon's been killing, so it stands to reason. Maybe, he was an unwilling taxi."

Lucifer's clenching the bedspread, staring into space like he's in a fugue. 

She points at the date the first body was found. July 6th. "Does this mean Lilith caught you as early as July?" How long is that in Hell time? If five months on Earth is several millennia below, then what's four months, almost to the day? God, she sucks at math, but she's sure it's not a small number. 

His empty stare unnerves her.

"Lucifer," she prods softly. "Does it mean …?"

He twitches, reanimating. "My ruling against possessions didn't stop the occasional delinquent idiot from trying." He sounds … hopeful. "Send me to Columbus, and we'll see."

"What."

He stands, brushing off the lapels of his robe. "Send me to Columbus to find the demon. It might have vital information on John's whereabouts, not to mention the state of Hell."

That's … a thought. She's still not used to having a partner who can zip all over creation at the speed of light. "Can you take me?" she asks, trying not to conjure images of Lois Lane draped across Superman's arms in a bridal carry. "If you go, I wanna go, too. We're partners, yeah?"

"You wish to leave your offspring unattended?"

"Well, I meant tomorr—"

"No," he snaps. "I wish to go now."

"Lucifer, Columbus isn't some small town where everybody knows everybody. I don't think twelve hours is gonna make much difference."

He scoffs. "Detective, I've no need to canvas neighborhoods to find a bloody demon. Not when it's likely the only demon for miles. What do you take me for?"

"You're saying you can just … poof right to it? In the dark?"

"Once I'm flying over the city? _Yes_."

O … kay. He'd mentioned before he can identify demons from "quite the distance." She just hadn't pictured "quite the distance" to mean an entire metropolitan area. Wow.

"Please, Detective," he continues. "I _must_ find John Constantine. And this demon is killing. We may not have time before it slaughters someone else—I can dispatch it easily."

"But what about Lilith?" 

"If this demon was sent by Lilith to reclaim me or kill you, why did it arrive months before I? And why would it be on a murder spree in bloody _Ohio_?" He speaks the word Ohio like a curse. 

"Could the demon have knives like Maze's? Things that could hurt you?" 

"Not unless an angel visiting Earth gave it a feather, and it knows how to smelt. The demon likely isn't _here_. Not corporeally speaking. So, it couldn't have carried knives from Hell." 

"Unless it _is_ here," Chloe says. "Or Lilith forced Amenadiel to give it feathers." 

He flinches as though her words plucked his feathers just now. 

"Lucifer, I think, maybe … making assumptions based on what _used_ to be normal is a bad idea."

"I know. I _know_." He paces, his slippers slapping against the hardwood floor. "But, Detective, I must _try_. It is my _duty_ to at least _try_."

"Your duty, huh," she says softly.

He stops, bristling. "Yes, what of it?"

"Nothing," she says, eyes watering a little. He has _loved_ ones now. People he's willing to fight for, even at great cost to himself. "Just … you've changed, I guess." 

"For the better?" he says, in a deceptively curious tone. But he isn't curious so much as wildly insecure. She can see it all over his face like an oil slick. 

"Lucifer, if I answered truthfully, you'd probably orgasm."

He doesn't blink. "I could bloody well use one right now." 

_No way_ , followed by a nervous laugh, is the knee-jerk response she wants to give him, but when he doesn't even crack a smile, she rethinks things. "You're serious?"

"Yes."

Holy crap.

She meets his gaze. He doesn't look away. Doesn't move. 

"You really want me to just …." She waves her hand in a weird, hitching gesture, suddenly feeling inarticulate. Her face burns like she's baking under a space heater. "Just …?"

"Yes," he repeats.

Her heartbeat pounds in her ears. Really, why _should_ she refrain from saying something nice, if he'll get pleasure out of it, and he's willing? She wants to give him pleasure. She _loves_ him. And this compulsion has forced her to become circumspect in ways she hates.

"Of course I think it's for the better," she murmurs. "I'm proud of you." 

He sucks in a sharp breath, his body tensing, his eyes fixed on hers as the pressure builds. A moment passes. Two. And then he's swept away, relaxing with a pornographic, overwhelmed moan as his groin kicks beneath his robe. 

She doesn't realize her fingers have drifted to the collar of her shirt until she's tugging at it. Hot. It's so _hot_ in—she snatches the remote for the overhead fan off her nightstand, fiddling with the controls while he catches his breath. The fan hums as it spins up.

"Thank you," he says dreamily. "Oh, I needed that."

"Sure."

He drapes himself against her closet door like a used coat. Like, for once since this nightmare began, he's decompressed. Unwound. Pain free. Liquid Devil. 

They don't talk about the orgasm. 

She's not sure if she's glad or miserable for his uncharacteristic reticence.

Eventually, he peels himself off the wall, reconstructed.

"So, will you send me to Columbus?" he asks.

Despite his arguments, part of her still wants to say no. But … how can she? This could be the break they need. The break _he_ needs.

"Will you let me listen over the phone?" she says. "I want to be there, even if I can't be there." 

"I'd bloody well bring you along if you thought Beatrice were safe alone," he assures her.

On another night, maybe. Trixie's almost twelve now. She can be alone for short stints. Sometimes, all day, in the right circumstances. But not when there are potential stalker demons from Hell coming after them. Not when this might be a trap meant to draw Lucifer away from the house. 

"Be careful?" she says in a small voice. "If you want."

"Of course." 

She resists the urge to stroke his face. Or kiss him. She _really_ wants to kiss him. Instead, she hands him her work phone, which he slips into the pocket of his robe.

"Tell me when you're ready," she says. 

He nods, and then leaves the room, calling over his shoulder, "Back in a jiff. I'd rather not hunt demons in my bathrobe, if it's all the same to you."

Rolling her eyes, she flops back onto the bed to wait.

* * *

Unlike Hell, the curse seems to consider Columbus, Ohio an acceptable destination. By 9:30 p.m., Trixie's asleep, and Chloe's stretched out on the sofa, listening to Lucifer's citywide search. He's a good narrator, and the sound of his voice is a pleasant rumble over static and wind. He can't, as it turns out, sense demons throughout the entire city—his range isn't that insane—but he's broken the area down into grids, and he's checking each one at a blistering pace. A hunter, in his element.

Another burst of static floods the line before dissipating—a sign he's moved to another grid. 

"Detective, it's here." The words are whisper quiet, deadly.

"Where are you?" she asks.

Her phone bings, and she pulls it away from her ear. A screenshot of the phone's GPS map, a blue dot marked at his location, pops into her text messages. He's somewhere near a river, but the name of it isn't listed. She notes the cross streets and the layout of the area, trying to picture it in her head.

"I think it's in this warehouse," he says, his voice muffled.

She switches the phone to speaker, so she doesn't have to keep juggling, as he sends another text, this time containing a photo of a ramshackle warehouse. Intricate cracks form patterns in the windows. The paint on the building is chipped, though it's hard to tell the color in the dark. A flash photo did no justice. No cars are parked nearby. 

A metallic scream floods the line, making her cringe. A door he's breaking—warping—maybe? Footsteps.

"Detective, there's another body in here," he murmurs. 

"Dead?"

"Quite. All fifty-seven pieces. I don't think it's fresh, either."

"Any ejected soul?"

"No."

So, whatever's happening with the bodies they've found in LA, it's not happening everywhere. She hugs herself as stress winds through all her muscles. They'll have to figure out a way to notify authorities without questions being asked. Maybe there's a payphone nearby that Lucifer can—

"Bakasura," Lucifer says in a sing-song tone. "I know you're in here. I can feel your oily little aura. Do come out, or I'll make you."

Something crashes in the background. Chloe jumps, dropping the couch cushion she'd been hugging. Another crash follows, and another. A roar. A slam. A high-pitched yelp of pain that sounds nothing like Lucifer, and then laughing. Awful, gurgling, wet chortles that make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. 

"Oh," says a strange pouty voice—a woman's, "you ruin all my fun." Like she chipped a nail or something.

"Lucifer," Chloe asks, climbing off the couch. "Lucifer, what's going on?"

Another picture pops into her texts. Lucifer's hand is clenched around a woman's throat, tipping her head back so her wide eyes and flared nostrils catch the flash. She's tiny. Brunette. Her pupils are so dilated it's impossible to tell what color her eyes are, and her mouth is ringed with bloodstains and bits. She peers back at Chloe with a fiendish, drooling grin. 

"This is Bakasura," Lucifer says. "Bakasura, _you_ should not be here." 

"But I missed the humans so," Bakasura sulks sibilantly. "How they taste. So juicy and full of sssin. There is no food in Hell, you know. I was ssstarving." 

"You can't starve," replies Lucifer without sympathy. "None of us can starve."

"I admit; it'sss predilection more than need. But they're delicious—unctuousss and rich—don't you think?"

"No," Lucifer says coldly. "I do not."

Chloe fights back revulsion, cupping her palm to her mouth. Hollow plinks like boards collapsing flood the line. Something smashes. 

"Where is John Constantine?" Lucifer demands.

Bakasura laughs, the sound worse than knives scraping glass. "Oh, I led him on a merry chase."

"Where?"

"Here and there."

"Tell me where," Lucifer says.

A giggle. "More there than here." 

"How long was he chasing you? Is he alive?"

"Tell me, did you ssslip Mother's leash, or has she sssent you to recall me?"

"What do you know?" Lucifer bites out.

"I know you're pretty when you beg, and when you bawl, and when you bleed.”

Silence.

"Lucifer," Chloe says, a lump forming in her throat. "Lucifer, she's just trying to rile you." _Don't let her rile you,_ she wants to scream. _Don't_ listen _to her._ But that would be a command. She clutches the phone, fingers shaking as she fights not to imagine the awful things Bakasura is implying. "Lucifer, I'm here. I'm right here on the line with you, yeah?"

Someone takes a shuddering breath—Bakasura, Lucifer, Chloe can't tell who. 

"Has Lilith taken Hell?" Lucifer says in a soft, sepulchral tone, an abyss made by sound. "Who aids her? What's her plan? Does she have Amenadiel? Azrael? Tell me. Now."

"Promissse not to banish me?"

"No. You're killing humans."

"They do sssqueal so lovely, do they not? I—" The demon's words cut into choking noises. Something snaps. Like bone. Bakasura rasps with constricted laughter. "Mmm, yes," she purrs, delighted, as though she orgasmed from the violence. "Hurt me more, my king. No one here will play with me. All they do is die."

"I am not," says Lucifer in the abyss voice, "playing."

Another snap. Another laugh. "Lucifer," Chloe interjects, "she's just trying to—"

"The other one didn't ssscream like you," Bakasura continues, pouting again. "I was disappointed."

"What other one?" asks Lucifer.

"Angel, angel, angel."

Chloe's gut swoops. 

"Which angel," Lucifer continues, a hint of desperation breaking through. "Where? When?"

"You all look so alike to me," Bakasura says, a nonchalant shrug almost audible in her tone. "I wonder, how did it taste? The blood and sinew. Did you sssavor it?"

"What the bloody hell are you talking about?"

"I wish I'd had a bite, too. It looked _divine_." 

A laugh. Shuffling noises.

"No!" Lucifer snaps. "No-no-no, wait!" 

Something crashes. 

Reverberates.

Then echoing, awful silence. Chloe can't even hear him breathing.

"Lucifer?" She says, waiting a few seconds. "Lucifer? Lucifer, talk to me. What happened?"

"He's gone," replies Lucifer, his tone odd. 

"Lucifer—"

But the line disconnects, and she's talking to no one.

* * *

_Constantine was spotted in Columbus, Ohio, Oct 22. Might have been tracking a demon_ , Chloe texts Maze. _Backsera (sp?)._

_Oh that dick?_ replies Maze without delay. _You know I'm banned from there right?_

What? Chloe tilts her head at the screen, frowning as she types, _Banned from … his dick?_

_No from Ohio silly._ A pause follows, an ellipsis blinking. _Not that it matters. Don't worry I'm on it._

Chloe forwards the pictures of the warehouse, and the map. _Can you get LEOs to check? 2 bodies there._

_Yup. Will do._

Chloe tosses her phone onto the coffee table, trying not to worry about her wayward Devil. He'd been incommunicado for about thirty minutes. He'd taken all of a blink and change to fly out to Columbus—his egress from her apartment had been so quick, the call had dropped in its mad scramble for nearby cell towers. But maybe he's taking time to collect himself on the return trip. 

She wishes she had any idea whether Bakasura had been lying specifically to upset Lucifer, or if there'd been a grain of truth in any of his intimations. The demon had known of Lilith's machinations without being prompted. Implied, even, Lucifer had been enslaved—not just captured, tortured—long before his escape. 

_Did you ssslip Mother's leash,_ Bakasura had said, _or has she sent you to recall me?_

The idea Lucifer had been bound to Lilith first makes Chloe's stomach flip and quiver, a cold sweat slicking the palms of her hands. But if Lucifer really had been cursed months ago— _millennia ago_ —how had Lucifer escaped after all this time? Why is he being left to his own devices? Why isn't Lilith retaliating when, as Bakasura has proven, she easily could? 

The web is tangling like discarded earbuds. There's so much they don't know. _Can't_ know. Not without Lucifer returning to Hell to gauge the situation.

Even that idea scares her, though.

What if Lilith hasn't done anything because she knows Lucifer will return eventually to help the "other angel," and she can afford to bide her time? Why waste effort chasing someone who's guaranteed to fly back of his own accord?

A shadow eclipses Chloe's television.

Lucifer, large and looming and dark, his crisp black suit revealing no hints of violence or blood. His face is pale, his body trembling. He rubs his arms, hugging himself like he's cold. Or lost. Or both. 

"He's dead," Lucifer says softly. 

"Who?"

"Bakasura. He's dead."

Her heart constricts. "You mean you …?"

"I didn't do a bloody thing. He ditched the body of the woman he'd hijacked, and then perished."

"I don't understand."

Lucifer shakes his head, a small stutter of motion. "Detective, demons can possess humans—astral project, if you will—but if they've no body to return to, when they leave their host, they perish. It's almost instantaneous."

"Okay," she says, standing slowly. "I'm not following."

"He ditched to evade retribution— _my_ retribution—not to suicide. He was gobsmacked before he died. I felt it. I _saw_ it."

She winds around the coffee table. The unsettled, almost frenetic vibes he's giving off—nerves skittering like spiders—fill her with foreboding. "And this is … bad?"

"It means his real body is gone."

"Okay," she says calmly. "And what could cause that?"

"I don't know. Demons don't do that." Lucifer shifts on his feet like he has no idea which way to direct his weight. "They simply … they don't. They don't do that."

"Don't … destroy each other's bodies?"

His distant gaze ticks to hers. He looks … destroyed, his face a rictus of disquiet and dissonance. "Oh, they'll kill each other easily enough when they're both at the wheel, so to speak. But bodies left behind for topside gallivanting are considered sacred."

"Maybe … Lilith did something? Would she—"

"Perhaps." 

"Lucifer, are you okay?"

"He kept looking at me like I was a bloody joke. There was no respect. No trepidation. Only amusement. I've never seen such open defiance. Well, other than Mazikeen’s, but she's not …." Whatever Maze isn't, his thoughts seem to scatter like leaves on the wind before he can speak them. "Detective, I …." His voice is starting to wobble.

Chloe eyes the two-foot bubble between them, raising her arms. "Can I hold you?" 

He doesn't reply, instead stepping into her space. She pulls him tight against her, pushing her fingers underneath his suit jacket to clutch his shirt. He's tense like a rubberband about to snap apart. "I keep having flashes," he whispers, pressing his nose into her hair. "I don't think he was lying."

"I'm here."

"I don't want them," Lucifer says. "I don't want to remember what she did."

"I know."

Chloe holds him as the moments pass, her fingers rustling against fabric as she strokes his spine. Late night becomes later. Longer. Deeper. Until the crackling emotional charge leaves him, and his weight sags like he's sleeping on his feet.

"Want me to sit with you?" she asks as they head upstairs.

But he waves her off, suddenly prickly, almost like he's mad at himself for falling apart. From her room, staring at the ceiling in the dark, she listens to him brush his teeth in the bathroom across the hall. He spends nearly seven minutes, scrubbing. Eventually the hallway light turns off. She can hear him through the wall, settling into bed. 

The house quiets. 

"I love you," she whispers.

Then she tries to sleep. 


	22. "never knew there was a door"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spent all damned day scaring myself silly with horror movies. I am _definitely_ not asleep by midnight.

He peers over the rims of his glasses—glasses he'd obtained from Reese's figment of Dr. Linda—glasses he'd _assured_ would be returned once he was done. The figment had frowned, licked her lower lip, and offered him sex. 

The worst part hadn't been rewinding to when he and Dr. Linda were fuck-buddies instead of friends. The worst part hadn't even been the aching temptation to acquiesce to her overtures, if only for a moment of respite. The worst part had been realizing, if he were to remain, he might glimpse the Detective. An echo who didn't believe. Fundamentally not _his_ Detective. Yet he'd wanted to stay anyway.

His own Forbidden Tree dilemma. 

An apple to irreparably alter his reality with one taste. 

He will not— _cannot_ —partake. 

For self preservation, he'll not be "done" with the glasses anytime soon. 

"Tell me, have you considered the flip side of your guilt?" Lucifer asks. 

"Have ya considered leavin' me _alone_?" Mr. Lawson shoots back.

Lucifer sits before a rickety upright piano—nothing like the beautiful Steinways Mr. Lawson helps construct. Beside Lucifer on the bench, the man plinks out _Für Elise_ , each note more wobbling and sharp than the last. 

"I assure you," Lucifer grits out, trying not to visibly wince, "it's the other way around."

The "music" stops. "What's the other way around?" 

"It's _you_ who refuses to leave _me_. Whenever I'm away from here, all I can ponder is _you_ —Dad knows why."

"I'm married, man," says Mr. Lawson, scowling.

"That wasn't a bloody pickup line!" Lucifer scoffs. "I'm merely contemplating why you choose to fester in guilt for debts already paid."

An exasperated sigh blusters in reply.

"You. Are. In. _Hell_ , Mr. Lawson," he enunciates. "I. Am. The _Devil._ " He waits for protestation, for the loop to violently reset, per usual. But nothing happens. "Hmm." He relaxes a little. "Well, that's progress, I suppose." Peculiar. "Have you been considering the flip side of your guilt after all?"

"The flip side of … what?" asks Mr. Lawson.

"Your guilt."

"I ain't got guilt."

"Mr. Lawson, I beg to differ." Pushing up his glasses, Lucifer holds out the pages he'd filched from the figment Dr. Linda's office. "And according to this article"— _Shake It Off: 7 Ways to Let Go of Guilt—_ "considering the flip side of one's guilt is essential. It's step one!" He taps the printout insistently with his index finger. "So, chop, chop already. Quit playing the bloody piano, will you, and examine your mental deficiencies."

Mr. Lawson pulls the lid over the piano keys, the soft thunk resounding. "Fine. What's the flip side of my guilt?"

" _Empathy_ , man," Lucifer insists. "Having guilt means you've empathy. Compassion. According to this article, it's apparently a plus—means you're not some garden-variety sociopath who committed murder out of a subconscious but futile desire to feel emotion. So, that's good, yes? Congratulations on not being a sociopath?" 

"How's it good to hurt _more_?"

Lucifer opens his mouth. Closes it. Frowns. "Yes … that … does seem a rather ill-conceived assurance for someone suffering enough to end up here. Perhaps step two will be more useful."

"Step two …?"

Lucifer flips the page. "Right any outstanding wrongs," he reads aloud. "Well, you can't un-murder." He looks at Mr. Lawson. "Have you tried apologizing to the relevant parties?"

The contorting, wrinkled, _are you for real?_ expression hasn't abated from Mr. Lawson's face. "Relevant … parties?"

"I'm not certain," Lucifer answers. "Anyone who might be sad this waste of space is—"

"He ain't a waste of space," Mr. Lawson snaps. "I _love_ him. He—"

"Mr. Lawson," Lucifer interrupts, attempting to sound gentle and only half-managing as his frustration bleeds through, "a man who loves you wouldn't burn you with a clothes iron on _purpose_."

Mr. Lawson balls his fists in his lap, his temples dancing as he clenches his teeth. "Nah."

"No, what?"

"Nah, I ain't apologized. I ain't got anything to apologize for."

"I'm inclined to agree." Lucifer tosses the printout onto the lid of the piano. "Really, this article doesn't seem geared toward justifiable homicide, does it?"

"Nah, I mean Ian ain't dead," Mr. Lawson says, rocking in place, making the bench creak. "Ian ain't dead, 'n he loves me. He swears he's gonna change."

"Mr. _Lawson_ ," Lucifer snaps. He adjusts to a mellower tone when the man flinches. "Dennis. Yes, Ian _is_ dead." Lucifer glances pointedly over his shoulder at the floor by the coffee table, where the still warm corpse stares sightlessly at the ceiling, a purple ring of bruising encircling its throat. The phone—with its tangled cord—rests askew on the floor, the receiver off the cradle, beep, beep, beeping into the quiet. "You strangled him after he threatened to carve you to ribbons in your sleep, if you'll recall." 

"Nah, I didn't," Mr. Lawson says, refusing to look at the body. "I don't."

"You _did_ ," Lucifer insists. "And perhaps he loved you once, a long bloody time ago, but that emotion twisted itself like a gnarled tree."

"Nah."

"He didn't change, Mr. Lawson. He will _never_ change. Not here. He's stuck in a bloody pointless loop of compounding guilt, just like this one. Bathing in self-imposed misery for the rest of time, just like _you_."

"Nah. Nah, that ain't true."

"It is."

"No!" Mr. Lawson belts, the word echoing off the walls.

The loop resets like the snap release of a trebuchet. The sights and sounds and smells of the crime scene ricochet away, propelled through the air as a solid cannonball of denial. Mr. Lawson reimagines himself in his now—then?—pristine apartment, sitting at the center island in his kitchen, sipping a steaming cup of liquid guilt. 

The Ian figment, clad only in boxers, stands by the stove, flipping a blueberry pancake with a spatula. "Ya can't leave," the figment is saying. "Denny, ya can't leave me. I love you. Please, I'll try counselin'. I'll try _anything_. But ya can't just _leave_. That last time was the last time. I _swear_."

Mr. Lawson closes his eyes, agonizing over his coffee cup before he says softly, "You're right. Maybe it'll be different this time."

"He'll never give you what you want," Lucifer warns. "Not approval, not unconditional love, not _anything_. Even if this were reality, I'd have my doubts, but it isn't."

Mr. Lawson turns around. "Get the fuck out, man. Just … just get the fuck out. I don't care who ya are."

Lucifer's fight bleeds out of him, replaced by frustration. He doesn't know why he bothers. "Of course. What's the bloody point?"

"Fuck you!"

There is no change in Hell.

* * *

He sits at his piano in the lesser throne room, tapping the B-flat key in a rhythm that's been niggling his neurons.

His subjects had fled the moment he'd sat down. Without prior exposure, demons seem too baffled by music to be enamored with it, and they tend to avoid, avoid, avoid.

He drops from B-flat to G and then D, a melody snaking out of his fingertips from distant memory. His eyes lose focus. Each note echoes off the shining black walls, resonating and stretching. When he hits the F and the E-flat, Lucifer's heart clenches like a fist. He snaps his fingers away from the keyboard, a silent snarl twisting at his lips.

Rhythmic wheezing hovers behind his shoulder. 

"What is it, Squee?" Lucifer asks. "Why haven't you run like your brethren?"

Squee bows to the floor, long and low, almost prostrating himself. His rags spread like a puddle across the tile. "My king," he tells his knee, "I'm only curious why you make these sounds."

"Because I _like_ to," Lucifer grits out. "Need you another reason?"

Squee closes his beady eyes, pressing his face against the floor. "No, my king. I am sorry." He genuflects as he backs away, out of the hall, out of sight. 

With a sigh, Lucifer's fingers drift back to the B-flat. Four in a row, before he descends to the G, and then the D.

At least, despite their perplexed reactions to the Devil's music, the demons seem to have been keeping the piano clean. The deep red tones of the polished, lacquered wood gleam in the dark hall. He dare not open the hood, dare not chance giving Hell any extra inroads into the instrument, no matter how he desires to hear each note resonate freely in such an acoustic space. For now, though, with care and diligence, they seem to be winning the war against Hell's encroachment. A small relief—one infinitesimal assurance—in the crushing swell of hopelessness threatening to drown—

" _What,_ Squee?" he snaps. 

The wheezing turns into a high-pitched yelp as Squee pinwheels. Lucifer grabs a fistful of robes, righting him before he hurts himself. 

"I am _sorry_ , my king," Squee wails, trembling, and he drops to the floor anyway to kiss Lucifer's boots.

Bloody hell. Lucifer nudges the demon away with his shin. "Off with you, please, if you've nothing useful to interject. I wish to be left—"

"But _why_? I only want to see as _you_ do, my king. I only—"

"This is why nobody likes you, Squee," Lucifer says, rolling his eyes. "Because you're an obsequious little troll."

"Thank you, my king," Squee replies, his voice like gravel.

Lucifer gestures to the doorway. Narrow black carpet bisects the room. "Go. Now."

"But …."

"But _what,_ Squee? Either spit it out, or leave."

The demon's mouth quivers as he straightens. "Please, my king. I wish to know about this song."

" _What_ bloody song."

Squee bows again, apologies gushing from his lips like water from a broken dam. "If it's not a song, what is it? I'm sorry if you've explained this before. I try so hard to listen to your every syllable."

"What the bloody me are you talking about?" Lucifer asks.

"The _noise_ ," Squee says, rocking back and forth on his clawed, crooked feet. "The noise you made just now, in that specific order! It gave me a picture, like you said it does for you." 

"Gave you a …." Lucifer's heartbeat claps like thunder in his ears. "You mean, you've heard it before?" He taps the notes again—B-flat, B-flat, B-flat, B-flat, G, D, F, E-flat—trying to ignore the way they make his chest tighten. "This?"

Squee nods. "Yes, my king."

"And what _picture_ did you see?"

"I was gleeful." A garish smile stretches his cracked lips. "It was nice to see you home again, serving in the loops, torturing someone fortunate enough to have garnered your esteemed attention." His needle-like teeth gleam as his smile widens. "Is this why you like music? Because the pictures turn you warm inside? It's wonderful."

"Well … yes, but"—Lucifer scowls—"what do you mean, I was home again, in the loops. When did I—" Realization hits him like an amped-up pugilist. "This is _Killing Me Softly_." 

"Is it?" says Squee with a wheezy giggle. "How delightful. Will you play it again? I want to be killed just like you."

"No, that's the name of the bloody song," Lucifer replies.

"So, it _is_ a song?"

"Yes," says Lucifer. But he'd never played this one before. Uriel had. Twangy and out of tune and _wrong_. 

"My king?" asks Squee, his voice echoing as if through a long canyon. "Is it still killing you?" He sounds a little too excited.

Lucifer's breaths tighten as he recalls the feeling of Azrael's soul-shattering blade sliding into Uriel's soft gut. Again, again. Each time the damage had been more horrifying and gruesome than the last, yet … Lucifer hadn't been able to make himself stop. Not even as the blood had formed a tacky, rust-smelling smear between his grip and the hilt. 

Again and again, he'd done it. 

Stabbed his brother.

Killed him.

His guilt had been a boa, constricting him with every repetition, suffocating him harder the more he fought.

If Mum hadn't been there to yank him loose ….

Lucifer shudders, trying to dispel the memory. Sweat slicks his skin, but he feels cold. "Squee," he rasps, leaning against the piano as he rises, his body trembling. "Squee!"

"I am sorry!" yelps Squee as he rushes to genuflect. "I am sorry."

"Stop apologizing, you twit!" 

"My king?"

"I think you've just solved my entire bloody conundrum."

"What is a conundrum?" Squee asks, frowning. "Is it bad?" 

Lucifer pulls his fingers through his hair. He'd been trapped. In the loop with Uriel. He'd felt so much guilt he'd trapped himself. At the time, the punishment had seemed logical. _Just_ , even. An eye for an eye. Even his mother yelling in his ear hadn't dissuaded him, at first. 

And, yet … in retrospect. With _perspective._

"Bloody hell. He can't create a new beginning if he's tangled in the past. That's why this whole bloody place is broken." Why simply talking to Mr. Lawson hadn't worked.

"My king?" says Squee.

Later, the Detective had advanced the narrative further. 

_Lucifer, you need to forgive yourself,_ she'd said.

_I can't._

_Why?_

_I don't know how to. I don't even know where to begin._

He'd been able to start putting his guilt away—to apply his desire for penance in more useful ways. But to get to that point, to hear the Detective, reflect, and act,

"He needs a mum, not a friend."

"Who does?" says Squee. 

Without answering, Lucifer flares his wings and takes flight, leaving a gaping Squee by the now empty piano bench. 

* * *

"Ya can't leave," the Ian figment is saying as the loop takes another lap into eternity. "Denny, ya can't leave me. I love ya. Please, I'll try counsel—dude, what the fuck?"

A gust wallops the papers and magnets clinging to the fridge, knocking them to the floor. Lucifer folds his wings, swiping the pancake griddle off the stove with a clang. The flame on the range licks his ruffling down, though it doesn't burn. Doesn't damage. It can't.

"Right, then," Lucifer says, interjecting his body between abuser and abused. "Come now, Mr. Lawson. Off we pop."

"What are _you_ doin' here?" Mr. Lawson exclaims.

"Really, must we _always,_ with the surprise, and the reintroductions, and the faffing about?"

He shakes his head like Lucifer took the pancake griddle and clocked him one. 

"I'm exercising my bloody sovereign right as King of Hell," Lucifer enunciates, nodding pointedly toward the apartment door. "So, come on, then. This way to freedom, since you can't be arsed to find it yourself."

"But—"

"Come, come, _come_ ," he insists. "No dawdling. Haven't got all millennium, you know. Or, well, I suppose we _do_ have all millennium"—he grips Mr. Lawson by the shoulders, spins him around, and gives him a gentle shove toward the door—"but I'd prefer not to spend it with _you_ , and once you've some bloody perspective, I assume you'll prefer not to spend it with _him_." What was once plain white wood responds to Lucifer's presence, morphing into dark metal covered by glowing glyphs. 

Mr. Lawson's eyes are wide. "Who _are_ you?"

"The Devil. As we have discussed quite literally _ad nauseam_."

"But—"

"Mr. Lawson"—the glyphs crackle and hum and pulse—"it's time for you to _leave_ this place." 

"But I'm wearin' pajamas."

"You're not wearing anything at all. You've no body. None of this is bloody _real_."

"But—"

"Denny, _please_ ," calls the Ian figment. 

Lucifer's eyes heat to molten as he fans his wings, blocking the figment from view. He grips Mr. Lawson's cheeks. "Look at me. Now. _Look_." An unholy benediction.

The injection of Word is enough to make the man listen. His blue gaze tracks upward, meandering along the twisting filigree of Lucifer's tunic. He locks onto Lucifer's face. 

"Yes," Lucifer says, his stare burning bright with the fires of Hell. "Look into the eyes of damnation. Look at _me_."

"Ohmygod," Mr. Lawson blurts, cramming all three syllables into barely more than one.

"Quite the opposite, in fact." 

Mr. Lawson's body trembles. "Please, don't hurt me."

"I've no desire to hurt you; I'm simply illustrating." Lucifer points to his burning eyes. "You are here, Mr. Lawson. This is not an idle threat; this is reality. You are damned."

"Oh, God." Mr. Lawson snivels. "Oh, God. Please, lemme go. Please, I didn't want this. I didn't want _any_ —"

"Yes, yes, guilt, blah, blah—I've heard it all before." Lucifer releases him. The door glyphs dim, their icy glow deepening to a dark ocean hue. The massive door creaks open, revealing a glistening black maw. "If you desire to leave, then leave. I'll not force you." 

"Denny, _please_ ," wails the Ian figment.

Mr. Lawson peers at the doorway before squinting suspiciously at Lucifer. "I can go?"

Lucifer nods regally. "You can."

"I'm … free?"

" _Yes,_ Mr. Lawson. The only power keeping you here is _you_. I am not your jailor, only your unwilling keeper."

"What's on the other side?"

"Hell. But at least not a custom-built shrine to your misery."

"I won't hurt anymore if I leave?"

Lucifer's chest tightens as his mind drifts to the Detective. To Dr. Linda and Mazikeen and Beatrice and all his new friends, left behind. Possibly already gone to dust and ashes, long ago. He has no idea anymore. "You'll hurt, regardless, Mr. Lawson. _Life_ is pain. But one would hope you'll not always feel this much of it."

Longing bleeds into Mr. Lawson's expression. "I … don't like to hurt. I'm tired of hurting."

"Aren't we all, Mr. Lawson?" 

"Please, don't leave me, Denny," the Ian figment repeats. 

"Shut your gob," snaps Lucifer over his shoulder. "You're not bloody helping." 

"Please, don't leave me, De _—"_ Lucifer jams the bladed edges of his feathers into the Ian figment's chest and neck and groin. Feathers slice sternum, sinew, and gut like rare filet. "—ckghgg." 

"What was that?" Mr. Lawson says distantly, transfixed by the door. "Did I hear somethin'?"

"Nothing that need concern you," Lucifer replies. Wet warmth trickles down his wing as gravity pulls the Ian figment's body to the floor, where it lands with a sickening squelch. Lucifer hops to the side, hiding his soiled wing behind his back, his other wing still censoring the violence. He nods toward the door. "Go, Mr. Lawson. Embrace a future."

"What future?"

" _Any_ future."

"But what if it's bad?"

Lucifer raises an eyebrow. "What if it's good?"

"But what if it's _bad_?"

"Then try again, will you?" Lucifer snaps. "And learn. And try again. And learn. And try _again_. That's what this bloody place should have been about to begin with. Not"—he gestures to the claustrophobic prison of pain behind him—"not this … pointless stagnancy. This … _wallowing_."

Mr. Lawson stares. "Was this door always here?"

"Yes."

"I never knew there was a door."

"Yes, a rather fundamental design flaw, I'm noting." Lucifer glares skyward. 

"I can just … go through?"

Lucifer allows his eyes to cool to terrestrial brown. This time, when he touches Mr. Lawson's arm, his grip is gentle. "Yes. You can."

The man takes a tiny step toward the door.

"Yes," Lucifer enthuses. "Yes, do it! One foot in front of the other." 

Another step. Mr. Lawson peers over his shoulder with a doubtful expression.

"Go. _Now_. Before you stagnate once again."

Another step.

"Yes," Lucifer says, almost a sibilant hiss. He makes a shooing motion. "Yes, good. Do it. Continue."

Another step. Mr. Lawson squares his shoulders. Swallows like he's trying to down a beachball. 

"Yes, Mr. Lawson! _Do it_!"

With one last step, Mr. Lawson reaches for the void. His fingers brush the glossy surface, disappearing up to his second knuckles. He laughs. "Oh, it's warm in there."

"Well, it is Hell," says Lucifer wryly.

Mr. Lawson pushes his arms in, up to his elbows. His biceps. His smile widens. "It's _warm_ ," he repeats. "I miss warmth." And then he's gone, his body dispersed to light in the dark. 

Lucifer steps through behind him, pulling the door closed as he's deposited into Death's Rows. Sand spirals from the dark sky, landing in his hair. On his shoulders and back. The shivering whorl of light that is Mr. Lawson hovers like a dandelion head, caught on the breeze.

"What," Lilith asks, "is _that_?" 

"What's it bloody look like?" Lucifer snaps.

She's propped against the carved wall, her arms folded over her breasts, her legs crossed at the ankle. Black smudges cover her skin where her shoulder connects with obsidian, and her feet are black and bloody to the ankles. The winged harpy creature tattooed on her belly seems to shimmer and writhe as she pulls away from the wall, slinking sinuously toward Lucifer.

"Souls never leave cells," she tells him.

"Well," he snarks in return, "you said you wanted change."

"That"—she directs a disgusted look at the ball of light, her nose wrinkling—"is _not_ what I meant. What are you doing with it?"

"What does it matter to you?"

"Souls come here to suffer, not—"

He leans forward, closing the distance between them in a whisper of movement. She doesn't blink when his eyes flash with Hellfire. Only stares defiantly back at him. 

"Are you challenging my decision?" he asks.

"No, my king," she grits out, "I only caution you to … reconsider."

He doesn't blink either. "You said this place needn't be a prison—I agree."

"I meant for _us_. For my children. Not these"—she affords another cringing glance at Mr. Lawson—"these _things."_

"Humans," says Lucifer.

 _"Yes_."

"Like you."

There was never any warmth in her eyes, but the words seem to freeze her body as well. What little color she had drains. "How _dare_ you," she rasps in her lowest registers, hands shaking as she hits absolute zero. "How _dare_ you rub my nose in what I have lost. What this place has _robbed_ from me."

He smiles slowly, tilting his head. "I am the Devil," he says, raising his pointer finger at her chin. "Hell is _mine_. How dare _you_."

"Your vacation has corrupted you," she says, backing away. "That … that woman has _corrupted_ you."

"What woman."

"Chloe De—"

He slams Lilith against the wall; her back hits the obsidian with a thud, followed by her soft, surprised gasp. " _How_ do you know of her?" he demands.

An empty smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. "A little birdie told me?" she says too innocently.

" _Squee_." 

She winks as if to say, _bingo_. And then she reaches for him. Places her palm against the breast of his tunic. "You should not love, my king," she croons with a condescending tsk, tsk, tsk. "It never ends well."

"What do _you_ know of love?"

"Nothing, anymore."

Her pointed tone makes his gut drop. He narrows his eyes. "Do not speak her name to me. Do not speak her name _ever_ in this place."

A little bow. "Of … _course_ ," she purrs, so ingratiatingly sweet she could make maple syrup. Then she turns from him without fanfare. 

The subzero chill in the air wanes as she departs, leaving bloody footprints in the ash and sand and dust. The fist crushing his heart loosens its grip. Shuddering, he returns his attention to Mr. Lawson.

"Now, where were we?"

At the sound of Lucifer's voice, Mr. Lawson contracts, condensing to a luminous, uniform sphere, and then he expands, splaying into a spiderweb maze of shining, searching tendrils. Like he's … stretching. At long last. 

Lucifer scoops him up, cradling him against his chest. The sunlit tendrils snake up Lucifer's arm, tickling his skin. 

"Come now, Mr. Lawson," he says softly. "I've things to show you."

* * *

Death's Rows expands into what feels like infinity in all directions. The sick souls—the guiltless—are sequestered in the Pit. But for every soul who ever died with requisite guilt, an address exists here. Theylive—if such an existence can be called living—amongst the impressive network of obsidian pillars, being slowly buried by ash—or, lately, sand—and other pyroclastic detritus. The pillars grow as the old layers are subsumed. Demons keep their personal favorites clear of obstruction, but the others fade from memory. Buried doors still exit into the hall, after all; will and intention do the rest. 

"What _is_ this place?" marvels Mr. Lawson.

He doesn't actually speak, and Lucifer doesn't actually hear him, so much as … knows. Knows the words. Deep in his heart, independent of brain.

"As I have said," Lucifer replies, "repeatedly. You are dead. You are in Hell.And I am the Devil."

"Ya look like James Bond."

Lucifer snorts softly, wishing he still had a suit like Bond's—the earthen fabric had long since disintegrated. "We've quite a few MI6 chaps in here, somewhere. But, no, I am the Devil."

"Ya really don't look like the Devil."

"Well, I _am_." 

"But I was just in—"

"That was not your house in Astoria. That was your _cell_. One you created for yourself. And I thought it time you've a break, yes?"

Mr. Lawson doesn't argue.

Lucifer stretches his wings, his longest primary feathers brushing obsidian on either side of him. The remnant grit and grime on the glass clings to his body. More stains—smut—he'll never erase. Whenever he dares to fly down here where the ash is deepest, his luster dims a little more. Eventually, his feathers will be dull and gray.

He isn't meant for darkness. 

He misses being clean.

Oh, to be _clean_.

That's why he goes for a dunk in the ocean first whenever he visits home. 

_Home_. 

The sand stops falling. He tries to push the pervasive ache away from his awareness as he beats his wings, pushing great swaths of air beneath him. His body lifts, and lifts, and lifts. Above the pillars, updrafts do the work for him, but he has to get there, first.

"Where ya takin' me?" Mr. Lawson asks as they rise.

"To my palace."

"To your palace. In Hell."

"Yes, of course. Do keep up."

Lucifer circles to the left. Scorching volcanic wind whistles against his skin. Through his feathers. The Screaming Cliffs tower in the distance, jagged hulking clefs of porous igneous, carved by erosion and eternity. The stench of brimstone burgeons as countless vents puke noxious steam into the air. But wind is why the Cliffs are named Screaming. As air hits the rocks and passes through, a steady shriek like a banshee wail fills the valley. 

Luckily, the journey over the noisy Cliffs takes all of an eye blink. Only Death's Rows provides a noteworthy obstacle for an angel, and even then, only because of the sheer—always expanding—area it covers.

"Why'd ya pull me outta that place?" Mr. Lawson asks.

"Think of me as your mum today." Lucifer frowns. "Well, not literally—you're not the antichrist."

"That's … good?"

They land in Strife, just outside the portcullis, which lifts when Lucifer wills it. Swirls of volcanic glass crack beneath Lucifer's boots as he strides forward, futilely trying to shake the silica from his wings before he folds them away. He passes through the double wrought-iron door of the palace. The front hall is grand, staircases ringing the room on either side. Lucifer goes straight though, into the lesser throne room. A coterie of demons loiter, bowing as he enters. 

"Here we are," Lucifer says, ignoring them.

"You _live_ here?" Mr. Lawson exclaims. 

"Upstairs, yes. This is where I receive visitors." 

But for once, no one seems to be waiting for him, neither to speak to him directly, nor to deliver an important message. No one comments on the nuclear light ball swaddled to his chest like a baby in a papoose. No one is even looking at him now. Which is … odd. Still, gift horse, mouth, and all that. He backs up a step, but a tiny gasp stops him from retreating from the room. 

Mr. Lawson. Fixated on the Steinway Model D, sitting in the corner of the throne room. 

An anticipatory grin tugs at Lucifer's lips as he heads to the bench and settles. Pushing back the keyboard cover, he improvises a quick melody in A-minor. "Lovely, isn't it?" he says, heart suddenly aching all over again. 

"Sure sounds better than mine did," Mr. Lawson replies. 

"It's not a gross condensation of guilt, so that helps." Lucifer frowns again. "Well, probably not, anyway. Truthfully, I'm not certain _what_ produced it. There was no music in Hell before this." But he can't see how a piano could be harmful outside of doubling as an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, unless the agony of nostalgia could cut like a physical blade. Which it can't. And again … gift horse, mouth. 

"Ian bought it for me," says Mr. Lawson softly. "My piano."

"Ah. Um." Lucifer gently pats the little ball of light. The heat of it makes his fingertips tingle. "There, there?"

"I feel like a weight is gone, y'know? Or … or less, at least, but—"

"I know," Lucifer says, an easy smile stretching across his face for the first time in ages. "This is where you begin, Mr. Lawson."

"Begin?"

"To forgive yourself, one would hope."

Who'd have ever thought his palace would become a halfway house for the damned? 

Lucifer shifts into the whimsical chords of _Clair de Lune._ He closes his eyes, trying to picture it. The moon. It hung over his balcony on the night he left the Detective. … When had that been? 

"Did I make this piano?" Mr. Lawson asks. 

Lucifer hits a wrong note and stops. "I've no idea, really."

"May I play?"

"May, yes. What's mine is yours. But can? No, I'd wager probably not."

"Why not?"

"Well, you've no solid limbs, for one, and most of Hell isn't built to adjust for you," Lucifer answers wryly. "But I can play for us both. Would you like to listen?"

"Oh, yeah. Please."

"Any requests?"

"Whatever ya want."

 _Home_.

The word carves him out, leaving ruin like the knife he swore it couldn't be. _Home_ is what he wants. The keyboard in front of his hands blurs. Perhaps he'd been wrong about nostalgia.

"Hey, are _you_ okay?" prods Mr. Lawson. 

"Oh." Lucifer blinks a few times, clearing his throat roughly. "Never you worry about this old Devil, Mr. Lawson. Now, what was I to play again?"

Suspicion vibrates through their bond like someone struck a tuning fork. Still, Mr. Lawson only repeats slowly, "Whatever ya want."

Lucifer considers for a moment. What might make a good "welcome to your beginning" song, to hear and feel and be. In the end, though, his favorite smile framed by his favorite face won't stop tugging at his heartstrings like a puppeteer, and the song he chooses has little to do with anything else. 

"I remember this!" Mr. Lawson exclaims. "I used to play it with my baby brother." 

"Oh?" says Lucifer. 

"Yeah!" Mr. Lawson's enthusiasm contrasts with Lucifer's solemnity, a moat that makes an island, as the lyrics coalesce. "Heart and soul; I fell in love with you. Heart and soul; the way a fool would do. Maaaadly—"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment :)


	23. "willing participation"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Election Day bonus chapter. Wasn't planning on posting this today, but somebody asked really nicely. Enjoy!

"It's all bloody gone now. Dad fixed it. Amenadiel and Azrael have returned. I'm _free_."

A buoyant but bass rumble of laughter drags her attention from her book, just as his smoking wings fold behind his back, the only remnant of his transformation two horns curling from his forehead. He pats his chest, smothering the last flicker of flame before it singes his pocket square, and then strides to her bed. "Detective, do you know what this _means_?"

"You're not compelled anymore?"

"Nope," he replies, smugly popping the p. "Command me to do something."

"Um." She sets her book down on the coverlet by her hip. "Get me a drink?"

"No!" He preens, not moving. "Do it again."

She grins hollowly. "Sort my sock drawer."

"No!" His enthusiasm makes her chest ache. He tilts his head. "What's wrong, darling?"

He smells of brimstone. Of smoke. His prison, calling him home now that he's free. Irony. She closes her eyes as her thoughts become the soft buzzing hush of white noise. "Does this mean you're leaving?" 

The bed creaks as he sits beside her. He cups her chin with a warm hand, holding her gaze with his own. "Hell is gone. I'm not going anywhere."

"What?"

Lucifer shrugs. "Dad decided it wasn't fair. Rewrote the whole death process. Detective, I'm _free_. _We're_ free."

"Really?"

"Really, darling." His eyes are bright like stars. "I'm yours if you'll still have me."

Tears make her vision blur as she nods, too overwrought to speak. He pulls her into his arms, and kisses her once, chaste and quick, a _hey, I'm here_ peck on the lips. A second time, less so. A third, delving, exploring, and the world goes topsy turvy as they tip over, laughing. 

She strokes the curve of keratin near his hairline. "I thought you said you didn't have horns."

"I don't," he replies, "but this is _your_ dream." He nips her lower lip. "Have a bit of a horn fetish, do we?"

"Red!" someone says far away. "Detective, red!"

She pushes the intrusion away. "What can I say?" She wraps her fingers around both horns, making him her willing captive. "I think they're sexy."

"Lucky for you," he replies with a chuckle, "I'm self-actualizing." 

He slips his hand under the waistband of her sweatpants, the heat of him snaking past her navel. Between her legs. Cupping her. She bucks in his grip when he—

"Detective, _red_. Wake the bloody hell up!"

Her eyes snap open to her ceiling pitching backward. Or she's pitching forward. Or— She flails in the fuzzy darkness. 

"Detective, stop! It's me. You were dreaming." 

Her fingers hit a hard warm thing, and her surprised exhalation becomes a shriek, but the hard warm thing claps against her mouth, silencing her. She squirms, twists, kicks, writhes. The ball of her foot connects with—

"Bloody hell!" he yelps. A gasp follows. A heavy thump. 

The covers tangle. She—

"Detective, _stop_ ," he snaps. "You'll wake the child, and—" The word chokes off into a tight, ratcheting moan. "Bloody fucking hell. Red. Detective, _please_."

His suffering cuts her grogginess like a knife. Lucifer. She flips on the light. He's crouched on the floor. Hunched over his knees, his body framed by the dresser and the bed. His fingers, white-knuckled, clutch the fitted sheet. His teeth are clenched, his eyes squeezed shut. He's panting like he's trying to ride through agony. 

"Red," he gasps. "Redredredredred." 

He's almost sobbing. Sleep refuses to loosen its grip enough for coherent thought, but his safe word rings like a bell. "I don't want whatever's causing this!" she blurts.

Exhaling, he sags to the floor in a heap. He's naked, she realizes. Naked, save for his strained-at-the-seams silk boxers, and he's wound so tight he's trembling.

"Lucifer, what _happened_?" 

"You were _dreaming_ ," he says tiredly. "And I heard you."

"I was … oh. Oh, no."

"Rather, oh, yes, Lucifer," he says, slipping into falsetto as he bangs his elbow against the box spring for dramatic emphasis, "oh, yes, oh, _yes_." He raises his fists over his head, running his grip over two invisible lengths. "And what was this bit, with the wanking two cocks, precisely?"

She's too mortified to speak. 

Panting, he lowers his hands to wipe at his face. "Bloody … never mind." 

"I'm so sorry."

"It's fine." He doesn't sound fine. His erection hasn't flagged. At all. He rubs his eyes, which are hugged by dark, bruised smudges. "Was it a pleasant dream, at least?"

She bites her lip. "Yes." Really. A lot.

"Might I suggest utilizing that vibrator you claim to own? Carry out the explosive conclusion while you're awake enough not to narrate to your slave?" 

"I can't do _that_! Not when you can _hear_!" And there is _no_ way she's commanding him not to listen to her masturbating. Jesus Christ, no. She's humiliated enough as it is.

"It's only sex, darling," he says. "Not a bloody crime."

He stumbles to his feet, his erection sticking out even further as he straightens his long torso. She tries not to linger on the bulge. Tries not to insert that detail into the remnants of her dream. 

A soft sound of sexual frustration catches in her throat.

His muscles tense suddenly in a rippling, cording steel line, distress and desire blooming in his expression.

"I didn't mean that to be a cue," she snaps before he can gather his wits to safe word. He exhales, his shuddering renewed, as she adds, "I don't want you to pleasure me"—she claws her fingers through her hair—"Jesus-Christ-I-can't-believe-I'm-saying-this-out-loud."

"Wrong deity again." He gives her a hopeful look. "I … don't suppose you'd like to have a go now that everybody is conscious?"

Yes. 

But ….

No. _No_. That would be _wrong_.

She hugs herself. "Lucifer …." 

Stepping away from the bed, he holds up a hand. "Don't bloody say it. I'm so bloody randy again I can't bloody think. Forget I bloody asked."

Then he's gone in a puff of air. 

Fuck.

With an inward, unhappy groan, she flops back to the bed, pulling up the covers. 

Fuck.

 _Fuck_. 

Why did her stupid hormones have to get involved _now_?

 _Loving you is,_ he'd said.

Love.

_Fuuuck._

* * *

The precinct is quiet on Friday morning—typical as people who've filed for leave turn two-day weekends into three. Chloe shoots an e-mail to Paula Holtman, explaining, "The victim told me John Constantine is an unlicensed PI with delusions of grandeur." Not … _exactly_ a lie so much as embellished paraphrasing. That done, she leaves Lucifer at her desk to nose through her mail. In truth, she's happy to give him space after last night. She wishes she could give him miles.

When she pops her head into the forensics lab, she only sees the lab coat at first. The long black ponytail bobbing to the beat of _Toxic,_ which plays softly over the bluetooth speaker on the counter by the computer. 

"Hey, Ella," Chloe says, "I was wonder—"

The woman at the microscope looks up, her big blue eyes catching the light, her "black" hair turning deep brown with a few streaks of gray, and the Ella-illusion shatters. Jo Kinsey, one of the other forensic scientists on staff. 

Which … is odd. This early in the morning, the only thing Ella should have been called out of the office for was another search warrant or incident to arrest, but they hardly ever execute warrants on Friday. Nobody had been squawking on the radio about any impromptu arrests, either. 

"Where's Ella?" Chloe asks, frowning. 

Jo shrugs. "Took some personal leave."

Shit. The call yesterday. The one Chloe had blown off in the USC parking lot. She'd promised to call back when she had a minute, but … never actually had. She'd forgotten. 

"I hope she's okay?" Chloe says.

"Oh, yeah, she's fine," Jo replies, giving Chloe a dismissive wave with her gloved hand. "Said something about going to Miami. Some seminar something something she got invited to last minute. I don't know the specifics." 

"Huh, small world." 

"Hmm?"

"Dan's in Miami, too. He's coming back Sunday." Which … Jo probably doesn't care about. "Sorry. Never mind." Jo had divorced last month, and things had been … rough. Chloe folds her arms, resting her hip against the doorframe. "How are _you_ doing?"

"We're dealing. The kids and I. Thanks for asking." With a blink and a sniff, Jo smiles in a forced-bright way that doesn't deepen her laughter lines. "Did you need something, Detective?"

"I was just wondering about that iPad I submitted yesterday. Did you guys start it yet?"

"Nope. Sorry."

O … kay. "Why?"

"Backlog." Jo holds up her thumb. "No legal search authority." Index finger. "No chain of custody report." Middle finger. "Not under seal." Ring finger. "Literally no explanation given at all …." Pinky. "Take your pick?" Irritation bleeds into the woman's tone, and Chloe gets the sudden impression she's a stand-in for every cop who utilizes the forensics lab, and that Jo Kinsey must be having a _bad_ week. "We can't just blindly work on everything you dump on us, you know."

"The guy who owns the device is dead," Chloe replies slowly, trying to inject calm into the discussion. "That's our legal search authority."

"Still need the forms explaining that."

Which … fair. Chloe's gotten used to Ella being willing—with the assumption of paperwork following shortly—to jump over the hurdles of red tape. In return, Chloe had always made sure paperwork followed at first opportunity, and she _never_ submits shit she doesn't have a legal right to look at; something other cops occasionally fudge.

"I'm sorry," Chloe says, and Jo's hackles seem to lower. "I'll take care of that as soon as I get back to my desk. How long to get data from it if I submit the paperwork today?" 

"Depends on the length of the PIN."

"Best case scenario?"

"A couple of months, probably."

" _Months_?" Chloe blinks. "Just to start it?"

"No, I meant it'll take months to do. Starting it might take half a year. We've got like fifty exhibits in the analysis queue right now."

" _What_?"

"Worst case would be years."

"To _start_ it?"

"No, I meant to finish it." Jo shakes her head. Sighs. "I'm sorry. I'm not being clear. I'm a bit frazzled this morning."

"But this is urgent," Chloe insists. "I can get the lieutenant to sign off on an expedite request."

"With an expedite request, we can start working on it in a few weeks, but it'll still take months at best to actually do. I'm really sorry."

"But Ella—"

"Look, I can't make technology work faster, and neither can Ella," Jo snaps. "Blame Apple. Not us. That's just the way it is."

"No, no, I know; I'm sorry." Months at best. Years at worst. Even if the iPad analysis is doable eventually, that's a dead end, in practice. Fuck. "I know you're working as fast as you can."

"No," Jo says, deflating. "No, I'm sorry, too. It's not you at all. It's just …." She directs a troubled gaze through the glass wall, out at the rest of the precinct. Kasinski ambles past as if on cue. One of the guys who'd given Chloe a hard time when she'd joined the force. He'd never gotten caught, but she's _sure_ he's the one who'd posted pictures of her nude scene from _Hot Tub High School_ all over the men's locker room. 

"Yeah, no," Chloe says. "I get it. We work with a bunch of cowboys." She offers Jo a gentle smile, despite the hopelessness tugging on her body like weights. "I'll get those forms written up."

* * *

The next stop on her getting-nowhere-fast tour is the desk of Derek Costa, the investigative assistant. He looks up from his computer, pushing his gold wireframe glasses up his nose to rub his bloodshot eyes. An open Red Bull can rests beside his keyboard. Empty cans burst from his recycle bin, a few littering the floor.

"Hey, Detective," he says, sounding like his world has ended. "I suppose you want an update, huh."

"I do." Chloe leans forward, resting her folded arms along the flimsy modular wall of his cubicle. "That bad, huh?" 

Derek's fingers fly across his keyboard, locking his monitor with a single keystroke before he turns to her. "Well," he begins in his soft, tenor tone, "the good news is a courier already dropped off the security footage and e-mails from USC, so, we're ready to go on that front."

"What's the bad news?"

"I … can't even look at it until the week after next."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Backlogs. Sorry."

"Would an expedite—"

"Everybody expedites, Detective," he says, shaking his head. "There aren't enough investigative assistants to go around."

"But this is a murder investigation!"

"So are the rest of my cases," Derek replies. "ODs, murders, and a suicide they're trying to confirm. I'm sorry."

She massages her temples in slow, soothing circles. "Can I look at the footage myself? Maybe Lucifer and I can—"

"Do you have access to the same kind of DVR USC uses?"

She frowns. "What does that mean?"

"The video is in a proprietary format. You need to view it through the same—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," she replies, holding up her hands. "I don't know how to do that." And if she doesn't know, Lucifer won't either. He's no luddite, but … he's also seventeen-trillion-years old and just got his first cellphone in 2017. 

"Look, I'm sorry," Derek says, "but I don't have time to walk you through it. If I had time for that, I'd just do it myself."

And Ella—Chloe's go-to for this kind of situation—is, of course, gone. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Another dead end. Chloe cups her face in her hands, peering at him through her fingers. "What about the e-mails?" 

"Also proprietary. It's gonna take me a while to convert them into a format you can use."

She sighs. "Great."

"I know, I know. Really, I'm sorry."

"Not your fault."

He directs a hopeful look at her. "I did have time to cross-reference the current addresses of the hazing victims' families."

"Oh?" she says, perking up. "And?"

"And as far as I can tell, none of them live in this area." He pushes the article and crime report in question over the cubicle wall, returning them to her. "The Robertsons are in Roanoke; Muellers in Boise."

"Okay, thanks," she says. "Guess that rules that out, too." 

_Fuck_.

* * *

 _Sorry I forgot to call you back,_ Chloe texts as she wanders back to her desk. 

_No worries!_ Ella replies. _Totes fine. I'm fine. All fine here. :) :) :)_

Chloe smiles at her phone. _How's Miami?_

_Miami?_

_Jo said you took personal leave to go to Miami._

_Oh that Miami._

_Yes that Miami?_

Chloe pauses in the hallway, flattening against the wall to let the evidence technician through with a rolling cart. Sealed non-drug bags fill the cart to the brim. Each bag contains a pile of random crap: money clips, a scale, a belt, a corkscrew, other things she can't identify at a glance. From a big take? Or maybe a bunch of old evidence headed for destruction. The cart rolls over her shoe, sending a jolt of pain up her leg.

"Sorry," says the technician.

"It's fine," Chloe gasps, massaging her toe through her boot.

 _Is there another Miami?_ Chloe adds when no reply from Ella seems forthcoming. _What's going on? What did you want to discuss yesterday?_

The ellipsis appears, indicating Ella is typing something. Then disappears. Appears again. Disappears. 

At last, a selfie of Ella giving the thumbs up pops up in chat. She's standing under a palm tree. The photo's background is residential—not downtown-ish like for a forensics seminar—and Ella's severe smile looks more like a pained grimace. Dark circles hug her eyes.

Chloe frowns at the pic. _You okay?_

_Yah took the red :eye emoji: :plane emoji: Jet lag. Srsly all good. :thumbs up emoji: :thumbs up emoji: :) :) BBS. Say hi to Lu._

_Will do._ Chloe stares at her phone, suspicion like a bug bite she can't stop scratching. _What forensics seminar did you get invited to?_

But the ellipsis never reappears. 

* * *

Lucifer is sitting with his feet propped on her desk, his body leaned back, her keyboard cradled in his lap, his eyes closed, and his hands steepled in front of him. If the situation weren't so increasingly dire, she'd grin. Praying. An actual archangel—the Devil himself—is praying at her desk. This isn't some method actor thing. It's _real_. 

For a moment, the sheer enormity of the craziness that's enveloped her life bowls her over. She has angels for friends. Demons. The Devil has a freaking therapist. The Devil has a master. The Devil is her _actual_ slave, who can't leave, and is summoned to her bedroom by the mere hint of her desires. How … the _fuck_. 

Her stomach churns at that unwanted thought. She glances to see if Ella's little "typing" ellipsis has reappeared in the chat window. It hasn't.

Lucifer takes an animated breath, blinking as he lowers his hands. "Hello, Detective."

"Any luck?" Chloe says.

"No. I think the Silver City must have placed me on the naughty list or some such. I've doubts my 'calls' are even getting through." He frowns at her. "What about on your end?"

She tells him what happened.

He gestures gracefully to the paper pile stacked neatly in her outbox. "I've already written the police report and filled out the chain-of-custody thingy."

"No way. Really?" She snatches the forms, eyes widening. Every description is concise, objective, and business-like. Nothing required illustrations, either, so he didn't go on silly stick-figure tangents. "Lucifer, these are _perfect_."

He scoffs. "Don't sound so amazed, will you?"

"Well, I didn't mean it like that," she says, a lump forming in her throat as she strokes the top page. She tries to remember if she asked him to do paperwork. Or expressed or implied a desire for it to be done, beyond her little oopsie moment on Tuesday, which she'd corrected, but … she can't think of a thing. Hell, they'd barely even spoken since her dream. Breakfast had been awkward. Still, "I … didn't make you do this, did I? I didn't mean to."

"No." He futzes with the finger where his ring used to be. "I desired to assist you, so I did."

"But—" At the wounded look slowly forming on his face, she rushes to say, "I just meant, thank you."

She slumps into the chair beside him as he pulls his feet down from her desk. 

"Should we," she says, "talk about last night? We haven't talked."

"Darling, really, why not have a go with your vibrator if it's still bothering you? At least, you've the option, unlike some of us."

"No, no," she says. "No, I meant … the stuff with Bakasura. And Lilith." 

"Ah." He ices over like a lake in January. "What do you wish to talk of?"

"Well, for one, are you okay?"

"I am when we're not talking of it."

"Oh." So much for distractions. 

"I understand you like to plan for every eventuality—to dissect feelings and details into the level of minutiae," he says, "but … I cannot indulge you." He looks at the desk, his long fingers idly skating the edges of her mousepad. "My endeavor didn't help find John, and when I think on that, I"—his eyes squeeze shut like a flash went off in his face, searing his retinas with lurid color—"Detective, I _can't_."

The distressed quaver in his tone makes her body clench with anxiety. 

_Keep his stress levels_ low _,_ Linda had instructed.

"Hey," Chloe says, leaning closer. "Hey, I'm sorry. We don't have to talk about anything you don't wanna talk about."

"I despise feeling trapped." His words are small. Reedy. 

"I know. I'm sorry." She cups her hand over his, staying his fidgeting. He flips his palm and clings to her. "For what it's worth, I _do_ think you helped. Maybe not immediately, but Maze is headed to Columbus to check around. And I'm not giving up, either. If we don't hear more from Adeboye by next week, I have more calls to make."

"Yes, well." He looks away with a sniff.

"Okay. Okay." She holds up her hands. "Dropping it now. I swear. We're dropping it."

"Thank you."

Which leaves … sex. 

Christ, she doesn't want to have this conversation. She doesn't even want to _consider_ it. Not when he's, by his own admission, so randy he can't think straight, and she's wound more tightly than a spooled kite string. But ….

The highlight reel from her dream starts all over again. Fuck.

"So," she grits out, forcing herself to look at her real besuited company, instead of his imaginary naked counterpart, "we seem to be at a bunch of dead ends. Investigatively speaking."

"I suppose we could try to figure out the DVR," Lucifer muses. "What's a bloody DVR, anyway?"

"Like your TiVo. Except in this case, it's for security footage. I'm sure Lux has one."

"Ah. That bloody thing. Yes. But I always hire someone to—" He stutters to a stop. "I could always cash in another favor?"

She rubs her tired eyes. "No … I don't wanna waste one of your favors on something that's just gonna get thrown out in court. We need a vetted LAPD staffer to look the footage over. And I think … there might be better uses for our time."

"Such as?"

Heat sears across her face. "Such as … going to that club. Dominus." All hints of previous upset melt from his gaze, replaced by the glint of mischief. She's quick to raise a palm in his direction. "And if you say _I told you so_ , I might shoot you. Fair warning." 

"Of course I didn't tell you so." He splays his fingers against his chest in a melodramatic _who me?_ gesture. "Detective, I would _never_."

She waits for the hammer to fall.

"I would only ever imply it."

And … there it is. "I knew you were gonna do that. I _knew_ you were."

"Oh, relax, will you?" he replies with an amused snort. "I've no desire to rub it in."

"Right."

"On the contrary, Detective," he crows as he sinuously morphs from sitting to standing. "I wouldn't do _anything_ to jeopardize your willing participation in this auspicious event."

"Why does that terrify me?" she wonders.

"Well, I am the Devil," he delights. "Perhaps it should?"

And why does _that_ excite her? Even just a little? 

Stupid goddamn dreams.

"Look, just … tell me what we need to get through the door of this place," she says. "I'm assuming the clientele would appreciate police questioning even less than you appreciate Bud Lite."

He grins. "Detective, you would be correct."

"So, what do we do?"

"I've a few ideas," he replies, a glimmer of thrill in his dark eyes. “Perchance are you in the mood to shop?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everybody who posts feedback—I truly appreciate it :)


	24. "horny, clearly"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I confused people with the cold open on the dream in the last chapter. Definitely wasn't my intent to trick you! Also, yesterday was a bonus chapter, not an instead-of-Wednesday chapter, so ... here, have one more :D Enjoy!

The sex shop still smells like a soap store. As the welcome chime resonates in her skull, the reek of lavender collects in her throat like she swallowed a cotton ball chaser. Or … maybe her mouth is just dry. Is her mouth dry? She pointedly steps away from Lucifer's hand, which had rested at the small of her back.

"Hello again, m'dears!" Rian Flannery says from behind the cash register. "Another interesting appendage for me to identify?" 

"No," Lucifer replies easily, "we're in need of accoutrements."

"What scene are you trying to set?"

"No scene, my good man. A visit to Dominus. Trying to look the part. The Detective takes acting seriously." Lucifer gestures at her. "I mentioned she's a newbie, yes?"

Rian smiles. "A maiden voyage, is it?"

" _Hi_ , um, Mr. Flannery," Chloe interjects before Lucifer can blab her sexual history from a bullhorn. She jabs her thumb toward the innards of the store. "Can we just …?"

"Of course," says Mr. Flannery, nodding enthusiastically. "Let me know if I can assist you."

"Will do."

She power walks down the center aisle like she's fleeing. Is she fleeing? When she reaches the back wall and has nowhere to go, she grinds to a halt, trying not to panic. 

The shop, while more oriented toward sex toys and props, has a small selection of fetish wear. Two circular racks on the floor, and several racks hanging at diagonals from bolts in the walls, all covered in leather and latex and PVC. The bouquet of buckles and straps gleams in the bright overhead lights. Somehow, given this display, she doesn't think the club will look kindly on a sub wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sensible brown boots.

"Do we need special clothes for this?" she asks.

"I do, at least," says Lucifer. "But I believe we can repurpose some of your existing wardrobe for you."

"We can?"

"You've leather boots, yes?" He gestures with the blade of his palm pressed against his right quadricep. "Black, supple, about yea high? I thought I saw them darkening your closet floor when I was trying to find Daniel's cast-offs." 

That's right. She'd last worn them on another sting. The "pajama party" with Char—Holy shit. 

"What is it?" he asks. Was she making a face?

"Just." _Sympathy for the Goddess, Detective?_ Lucifer had said once. Goddess. G-o-d-d-e-s-s _._ "Just realizing with full context that I've met your mom."

His brow furrows. "Ah. Yes." 

"So … _Charlotte._ For real? She was—"

"Yes." The worry lines on his forehead deepen. "Well, no." A sigh. "Yes and no."

"… Do I _want_ to know how the hell that happened?"

A pause. "Charlotte died. Temporarily. While she was absent, Mum inhabited her body. After she jumped from the Pier, the real Charlotte returned."

He makes it sound so simple.

"But … for a while—before Pierce—Charlotte was actually Goddess." Chloe spreads her hands in a vague, sweeping gesture. "Like … ac-tu-al-ly Goddess."

"Yes." 

"So, I've definitely snarked at female God." About pajama parties.

He cocks his head. "I'm afraid you've lost me, Detective."

She's not sure what's more absurd. That she's snarked at Goddess, that she snarks regularly with Satan, or that she's taken Satan shopping for fetish gear _while_ snarking. Holy shit. Her words are faint as she continues, "Nothing. It's nothing. You were saying about clothes?"

He folds his arms. "Have you ever borrowed garments from Maze?"

"… No?"

"Well, my eye for these things might be rusty, but I believe the dress she left behind will fit you. Which would mean you've already got a complete ensemble, unless you'd like to accessorize."

"Accessor—wait, what dress?"

"The one you tossed into the give-away bag when you were cleaning out her old room?" He makes a face. "Or was that a give-back bag? I wasn't entirely clear."

Chloe thinks back, remembering a skimpy sliver of material with satin ties and chrome buckles. "That was a _dress_? There was hardly enough fabric in that thing to make a thong!"

"We can find something with better coverage, if you'd be more comfortable," he assures her. Rubbing his thumb and index finger along his chin, he peers at her in a way that makes her feel stripped and dressed and stripped again. "Have you any other LBDs that might pass?"

"I could wear a normal black dress?" she says.

"I don't see why not. Bondage is a mentality, not a wardrobe." He gestures at the racks. "Stereotypes are stereotypes."

"But stereotypes play into expectations, and we're trying to convince people we're the real deal."

"True." 

She steels herself. "If you think Maze's little black … _something_ … would be good for this, I'll wear that." 

He grins. "I was _correct_. You _do_ take acting seriously." The delight on his face and gushing pride in his tone make her feel special. "Which leaves only me … hmm." Hangers snarl across the floor rack's arching dowel rod. He snatches something shiny and black from the bunch—a PVC shirt?—and hangs it off his wrist. "Not my preference, but, as we're pressed for time, it'll do in a pinch." The shirt looks … very small compared to his body. Her thoughts ricochet to a zoomed-in view of him putting it on. It's a really nice view, and— "What do you think?" 

A phantom riding crop cracks against her skin. _Pay attention!_ The sting of it dispels the cotton. Cotton, everywhere. 

"Sorry, what?" she says.

"What," he replies. "Do. You. Think."

He holds the PVC shirt and a pair of leather pants against his long frame. Both look small enough to create a metaphor about a toothpaste tube, his body the paste. "You're seriously gonna wear _that_?" she asks.

He glances at them like he's reevaluating. "Unless you don't like them?"

"How the hell will you _breathe_?" 

His lips stretch into a wide, predatory smile. "Well, I don't intend to zip the shirt. And I'll break in the trousers once I've donned them."

Holy …. She tries not to let her brain wander toward watching him "break them in." Or to the smell of fresh leather mingling with his Clive Christian No. 1. Or to licking his bare skin from navel to sternum. Or would he be licking her since she's the one who'll be tied up? Maze's LBD—LBS?—did have plenty of gaps for licking through—though she'd really rather lick _him_ in this moment—and _whyyyyy_ is her body doing this to her. 

"Now, what about props?" he adds breezily.

"… Huh?" 

"Like whips and gags and things."

Whips. You don't say. "We need props, too?"

His leather pants and PVC shirt flare from the hangers on his wrist like a cape as he sashays into the aisle with the gags and collars. He picks a ball gag from the bunch. "What about this? Would you like to use this?"

"Um." She glances at the red rubber. Definitely no licking on her part if she's got that crammed into her mouth. Or, maybe, that's the point. Denial makes the heart grow desperate? _Of course it does,_ mind's-eye Lucifer purrs by her ear, his leather pants creaking as he leans in. Or, maybe, being gagged just means she'll be drooling literally instead of figuratively. "Asking questions will be hard with that."

"Excellent point." He returns the ball gag to the shelf. "I can see why you'd be reluctant your first time out." He picks up a simple leather collar. "This?" 

"… Sure?"

"And this?" A matching leash.

The imaginary whip snaps against her ear again. _Do you like that, slave_? "I … guess so?" 

He traipses down the next aisle. Cock cages. Cock rings. Butt plugs. "Not custom built like our victim's, of course," he says, gesturing to one of the cages, "but since we're only trying to pass, not play for fun, I believe it will be—"

"Wait. Wait a sec."

He pauses his perusal. "Yes, darling?"

She gestures at the shelves. "I thought this was for subs."

"It is."

But … she can't wear a cock cage.

An epic record scratch screams in her head. "Wait, you're expecting _me_ to dom? These things—the gag and the leash and—" Her imaginings go topsy turvy. "They're all for _you_?"

His expression crinkles in apparent consternation. "Well, I can dom if you like, of course; I am a switch," he says slowly. "But I assumed you'd prefer to be the one in charge, yes? Directing our inquiries?"

"A switch is … is both?" There's a _both_ option?

"Yes. Whatever you desire."

"But … you jumped straight to sub with me."

"Well, I admit, I did assume—"

" _That's_ your fantasy?" she marvels as mind's-eye Lucifer hands her the whip with a smirk. "For me to be …? For me to dom for you?"

"Yes." 

Wow. Holy freaking wow. 

"Detective, are you quite all right?"

"I thought …."

His lip twitches. Not the beginnings of a smile. Something else. Something dark and frothing and humorless. "You thought I'd be the one cracking the riding crop, so to speak?"

"Well … _yes."_ Stereotypes are stereotypes. 

"Would you like that?" he purrs. "Would you like me to dom for you?"

She swats at him. The pants and PVC shirt sway like pendulums from his arm. "Lucifer, we're talking about _you_. What _you_ like. Don't do the thing where you play dirty chicken with me, knowing I'll back off."

"Dirty … chicken?" he parrots.

"Yeah." She folds her arms. "That's what I said."

His affront melts like ice on flame. "I _thought_ so."

"Thought _what_?"

"You, darling," he says, "are _not_ a sub at _all_." He strokes her chin, his gaze hooded like he wants to kiss her, and she struggles not to grab his hand to keep him there. "You cannot tell me any of this enticed you when you believed it was for you."

"Not really," she confesses. "I mean, I was. Turned on, that is. But it got twisted in my head." His knowing expression makes it _way_ too easy to babble. "You seriously want me to leash you? To collar and gag you like you're my bad dog? When"—she gestures futilely at him—"when you're already compelled to be my …? When you just went through …?"

He offers her a hopeful grin. "Well, it's different when it's my idea."

"Is it?" she asks dubiously. "Is it _really_?"

His smile dissolves again. "Detective, you'll find in these types of relationships that the sub has quite a lot of control over what is happening—what can happen. This is not a reenactment of _Fifty Bloody Shades of Grey_. It is not abusive; it is not exploitative; it is _not_ stereotypes wrought by the woefully uninformed—it is a hundred percent consensual." He leans close, his dark eyes searching hers. "So, yes. It _is_ different. I'm _choosing_ this. I'm choosing _everything_."

"But … _really_?"

"Yes, Detective. _Really_. This is what I fantasize about. And, _yes,_ I do consent in this context. With you. Specifically. The compulsion doesn't factor in." His stare is intense. He doesn't blink. "But if you cannot get on board, I understand. This is quite the leap for you, and, as I've said, you opting out is not a dealbreaker for me."

The whip from her daydreaming is a hot, awful brand, burning her palm. She throws it away. Mind's-eye Lucifer doesn't seem to mind. Instead, he stretches before her like a cat bearing its soft belly to the noontime sun. _Do what you will to me, Detective,_ he purrs. _No more. No less._ And now … _now_ … heat snakes through her lower body. 

"You just want restraints and stuff," she muses aloud. "Submission. Denial. Me bossing you around. You don't want me to hurt you."

"I've no taste for pain play," he confirms. "Not my jam."

Everything clicks into place. 

"Okay." She squares her shoulders. Her thoughts reorient. "I think I can at least do that."

He brightens.

"I'm the dom," she decides.

"Yes, you are, darling." The pride in his expression is back.

She takes the leash from the bundle of buckles draped over his arm. "For now, though, I—" Her fingers clench around the ribbed edges of the leather lead. "This is like … _way_ too close to home."

"Absolutely understood," he says. "Apologies for—"

"I don't want to put a leash on you, or a chastity belt, or a gag, or … or make you wear a …." She winces when her wandering-anywhere-but-him gaze lands on a box containing some kind of butt plug. She drags her attention back to him. "Will a collar by itself be convincing enough?"

"Dom/sub relationships are not one-size-fits-all, Detective. We can convince without props, if you're willing enough to sell it with me." 

The way he speaks strokes down her spine like a caress before coiling in her gut. Her skin feels hot. Too hot. She shifts on her feet, flustered. "Just … just … just wear the collar, but leave the rest, okay?"

"Yes, Detective," he seems all too happy to say. He wanders back to hang the leash where he'd found it. 

"So, what next?" she asks.

He stretches out his arm, offering the collar to her. And then he bares his neck. Her eyes widen. "What, _now_?"

"Why not?"

She glances wildly at Mr. Flannery—he's standing by the register, pointedly ignoring them while he probably listens to every damned word. 

"I've an open tab at this store," Lucifer says, his eyes gleaming. "Don't worry about paying first." 

"But—"

"Rian," calls Lucifer, straightening to peer over the shelves. "Simon will settle up with you as soon as he's able—is that acceptable?"

Mr. Flannery beams. "Just bring all the tags and boxes to the register before you leave, so I can keep my inventory straight."

"Excellent. Thank you."

Lucifer returns his gaze to her, the tendons running down his neck in sharp relief. Her mouth is suddenly dry again. 

She fumbles with the price tag, scraping off the little label with her fingernail. She drapes the collar over his throat, securing the shiny buckle under his Adam's apple, careful to leave two fingers worth of slack available under the strap. Like they recommend for dogs. For _dogs_. When, in this moment, he's her real slave. _Howisthisokay_? her tiny voice screams at her in a rush, even as an aching heat blooms through her body, between her legs. But— 

He takes a long, relaxed breath. She cups her palm against his throat, running her thumb along his jugular. He's warm and feather soft, and his pulse pounds against her skin.

"Good?" she says softly.

"Yes, Detective."

"Good. Let's … um." She can't think. Why can't she think. The collar looks weird with his suit. It'll definitely work better with the leather and the too tight PVC and— "Let's …."

"Finish shopping?" he prods.

She snaps her fingers, pointing them like guns. "Right. Yes. Let's … do that."

He bows, gesturing her onward. In front of him. Like his queen. Like his dom. Like ….

Oh, holy hell. There is no way this ends well.

Is there?

* * *

She spots it by the register. On the rack chock full of Halloween surplus items. All marked down by 60, 70, 80 percent, depending. As soon as the mental picture forms, she's grabbing the little plastic sleeve before she can convince herself not to bother. That it'll just offend him. She's supposed to be a dom, after all. She can just … tell him to wear it. Can't she? 

She holds up the container, her fingers clutching the cardboard clasp at the top. _I want you to wear this_ , is what swirls in her brain. But what pops out of her mouth is more, "On a scale of one to ten, ten being horrifically horrendously opposed and offended, how opposed are you to adding this to your costume for the club?"

His dark eyes trace the package, and he laughs. Quick. Curtailed. Like someone told him a joke he doesn't quite get. "What, are you serious?"

She chews on her lip, letting her silence speak for her.

He inspects the contents, the plastic crinkling. "With you _specifically_ ," he's careful to say, biting into the words as he strokes the label, "I'm not opposed or offended. Merely … intrigued."

She fights not to look away. "You know, the two … um. The two cocks. Last night."

His buoyant laugh—this time with gusto—matches his laugh in her dream—as he puts two and two together. "Oh, _dear_ ," he says, his words rumbling and good-humored. "Have a bit of a horn fetish, do we?"

"No," she replies, feeling like she got caught stealing candy at the checkout aisle. She glances at Mr. Flannery, who's doing a bang-up job at looking like he's heard far worse. "Nope. No fetish. Just …." Okay, maybe a fetish.

"If you say so." Lucifer's humoring tone makes her want to scream as he rips the cardboard clasp, pulls open the plastic sleeve, and dumps the package contents onto the counter with the other tags and sundry. "Care to do the honors, Detective?"

"The what"—he bows, stretching out his arm with the headband in tow—"oh."

She settles the little red Devil horns over his crown, nestling them into his hair behind his ears. When he straightens, he leers at her. Between that and the collar she buckled onto him—marked her territory with—he looks … really … really …. 

Hers.

Really hers.

He runs his pink, wet tongue over his teeth, and suddenly she feels so empty she could die. Not grabbing at him, not _kissing_ him, becomes an effort to occupy all her churning thoughts. 

"I suppose one good thing has come from Dante, after all," Lucifer decides gleefully. He grabs the door for her. The welcome chime dings as he gestures her through. "After you?"

"Bye, Mr. Flannery," she calls over her shoulder. "Thank you for your time."

"Of course, m'dear, of course. Do have fun!"

Fun. There's a word.

She steps into the sunshine like she's stepping in front of a train, her submissive Devil following behind her. 

* * *

They make one more stop at a shoe store to pick up some footwear for Lucifer that goes with leather pants—he chooses a pair of military-style designer boots and then charms the price down to "free." With their prop and costume shopping done, and the case at a standstill until the club visit, they go for lunch. They eat ice cream on the Pier for dessert—he orders a decadent three scoops of chocolate peanut butter, precariously perched on a waffle cone, doused in oozing chocolate syrup, and then proceeds to make a porno with his tongue and his orgasmic sound effects. Normally, she'd be shrinking under the table in mortification, but today, she's only transfixed.

Imagining.

Each moan and lick twists her insides tighter. And then his stupid self-starring porno is playing in her head like a freaking highlight reel. 

Until he boops her with his unfinished cone, leaving a chilled chocolate kiss on her nose. She blinks herself back to reality with his sinful smile there to greet her. A smile made only more wicked by the Devil-horns headband. Which he wears—with the leather collar—the whole. Freaking. Time. Not once tugging on the buckle at his throat, or readjusting anything like he's uncomfortable. Not once commenting they look incongruous with his $10,000 suit. Like … he notices nothing but her. 

His "dom." 

Time slows down. 

He seems better now. Happier. He's achingly handsome when he's happy.

She's warm. Tense, but simultaneously relaxed. Butterflies dance in her stomach and clouds float in her head, and she feels like she'll lift off the boardwalk, as if his wings were hers. 

How is this possible when, a mere week ago, she was grieving? 

"So, how does this … work, exactly?" she asks as she throws her empty ice cream cup into the bin with her spoon. "The club, I mean. This."

The salt-laden breeze ruffles her hair. The sounds of cackling gulls, rolling waves, and rampant chatter tickle her ears. She and Lucifer had decided to walk and people watch to kill the afternoon. And then pick up Trixie early.

"There's a small reception area where they'll check your ID and go over the rules with you since you're new," he says. "No sex in the club; no means no; unsolicited propositions are grounds for immediate expulsion, et cetera, et cetera—then they'll take your cover charge." 

They settle against the railing overlooking the beach, near where Charlotte Richards had returned to her body.

Chloe looks up at him. "There's … no sex in the sex club?"

"The club is for socializing with like-minded individuals. There are fully equipped private dungeons you can rent for scenes that include sex, but that's an extra fee."

Somehow … not quite what she expected. Though it makes sense to enforce clean facilities. To enforce _consent_. Consent seems to be the sticking point.

She reaches toward his face, her thumb outstretched. "You've got … you've got chocolate. On your …." He lets her swipe it off the left corner of his lip without comment, his gaze never leaving her. The Devil horns seem extra cherry red in the sunshine. Another smile tugs at his face, and she can't help but mirror his expression. "What?"

But he shakes his head and says nothing. She roots through her purse for another tissue, wipes her fingers, and throws the paper away. 

"So, what else?" she asks.

"We need to have a candid discussion about consent."

Speaking of. She waits for him to continue.

"I understand, to sell this not quite charade, you may need to express desires I'll then be compelled to fulfill," he rumbles softly. "I consent to any command that obeys the rules of the club, so long as it doesn't compromise my ability to offer informed consent."

Oh. Oh, shit, she hadn't even thought of that. That she would have to actually …. "You're really okay with me forcing you to do things?"

"In this specific context. And you're not forcing me."

"It sure feels like—"

"Well, it's not as though I'm telling you to boss me around with abandon. Which, by the way, I am not, and I do _not_ consent to."

"But—"

"Detective, are you all right?" he asks, tilting his head. Against the azure sky, his complexion and stubble starkly contrast—the sun almost forms a halo around him—and he looks every bit as angelic as his birthright. "If you're doubting this, I understand."

"It just … it feels weird," she says. 

"What does?"

A frothy wave spills under the Pier's support struts. Foam slurps and sloshes. "It feels weird to abuse the compulsion like that. _Wrong_ to do what Lilith did." 

"It's not abuse," he counters. "What we're planning to do isn't at all what Lilith did." His fingers brush her arm. "Also, we're not going to convince people I'm your sub if you can't give me orders without qualifying everything with, 'if you want,' or, 'if you like.'" He pulls her against him, the warmth of his shoulder mashing with hers as he scrutinizes the wet sand below. "That's what my preemptive consent is doing. I'm saying what I want and what I like beforehand, so you'll know without asking, yes?"

"Okay," she says, nodding. "Okay. It makes sense when you put it like that."

"I consent to being touched by you at any time, on any part of my body, so long as you adequately telegraph your intentions." 

"So, don't surprise you." Which she's already been trying to do anyway. "Got it."

"I consent to being gagged, collared, ringed, stripped naked, led about, and shown off." And … she's back to wondering what the hell she's gotten herself into. Jesus Christ. "I do _not_ consent to pain play, derogatory remarks, or humiliation, though I consider pain play a soft limit, not a hard one, if you've something particular in mind."

 _You know, I'd try it with you, if you desired,_ he'd said of wax play.

"Lucifer, I wouldn't do _any_ of that," she insists. "Hurt you or humiliate you or—"

"I'm not saying you would, but it's best to be explicit. In the open club area, I also do not consent to restraints or blindfolds, and I don't wish to be caged."

"Okay."

A sly smirk slowly forms on his face. "But if you rent us a private dungeon, you can tie me up and cage me all you like."

"Lucifer, we are _not_ gonna rent—"

"If we _do_ ," he bulls onward, "I consent to shagging you or being shagged by you—pegging is fair game, if that's your jam."

"We are definitely not doing that. Lucifer, this is for _work_."

"Would you do it if we weren't working?"

"Not when you're freaking compelled!" she snaps, pulling away from him to glare. "I don't care what kind of consent you offer beforehand. No. N. O. There will be _no_ sex when you're my literal freaking _slave_."

"Well, I had to mention it, or I wouldn't be me."

"Lucifer."

"In a Harlequin novel, we'd have shagged by now."

She makes a face at him. He only smiles wistfully like … _c'est la vie,_ before resettling his arm over her shoulder. Kissing her gently on the temple. "I do appreciate you're so concerned with my being an inarguably willing participant. It's … quite refreshing, actually."

 _I know you're pretty when you beg, and when you bawl, and when you bleed_ , Bakasura had taunted.

Her chest aches like someone grabbed her heart and squeezed. She grips the wooden fence hard enough to hurt her palms. 

_I keep having flashes,_ Lucifer had said. 

_I don't want them. I don't want to remember what she did._

"For anything I've not mentioned," Lucifer continues, "or if you're ever at all unsure, we can always talk at the club. It's normal to color check throughout an interaction."

"Color check?" she asks.

"Ask me what my color is. If I say green, I'm a happy Devil."

"And yellow is slow down—check in more often with you. And red is stop."

His eyes crinkle at the edges. "Now, you're getting it."

She focuses on a sailboat straddling the horizon. The water's surface is choppy in the breeze. White crests break the gray-blue swells at uneven intervals. "Do you mind if we go tonight?"

"I'd assumed we would."

"I know we had the piano-bar date, but … this is important," she explains. "I've got childcare already lined up. And Mr. Schofield said Alastor liked to meet people on Fridays." And if she waits, she might lose her nerve.

"You needn't justify." Lucifer nuzzles her, murmuring against her ear, "Besides, this will be fun for me, remember? I've traded up."

Fun. There's that word again.

"You're sure you're not consenting to this because yesterday was bad?" she has to ask. 

"Yes," he says. "I desire this. I've _always_ desired this."

"Okay." She watches the little sailboat bob and shudder before turning to him. "Lucifer, why _do_ you like this stuff? Is there a reason? Because this seems so …." She can't even decide what this seems "so." Dubious? No. Not dodgy, either. Whatever floats his spectacularly smutty boat is fine with her. "So … lost in translation to me."

"Does it." No judgment in his tone.

"I keep thinking I've got it. That I'm ready to take the plunge. And then my thoughts dive off a different ledge than the one I planned for." 

"Sometimes, kinks are just kinks, darling," he says. "There is no reason."

"Yeah, I know"—the horn thing comes to mind—"but …." She takes a breath and blows it out. "Can you _try_ to explain the appeal of this to me? To an outsider, looking in? Because I feel like I'm missing something."

He's silent, his gaze growing glassy and distant as he faces the water. The wind tousles an unruly black curl of hair, though the Devil horns haven't budged. He licks his lip slowly. Not, for once, in a porny way. Like he's deep in thought.

"It's," he decides at last, "about establishing a bond—an unassailable trust—with another individual or individuals." He glances pointedly at her. "Some are attuned to taking control." His attention shifts back to the water. "Some are attuned to surrendering themselves. Either way, trust is offered and returned bidirectionally."

"And you like both. Taking control and surrendering yourself."

"Either can be intoxicating in the right setting." He tilts his head, stroking the collar she claimed him with. "I actually find it comforting."

"Comforting?"

"Yes. Comforting."

Put like that, she can sort of see it. The why. Particularly after his enslavement, the idea of trusting someone—of feeling safe, and _heard_ —must be … enchanting. Maybe this would even be therapeutic for him. 

"But you're the Devil," she counters. "You can literally stop an SUV from peeling out of a parking lot with your bare hands. Aren't you only playing at submission when you do a scene with humans? I mean, you're never _really_ vulnerable."

"I suppose that's true." He looks at her again, offering her a bald, almost unnerving stare. "With most humans, anyway."

"Did you and Maze ever …?"

"I've always dommed for her."

Chloe swallows. "So … when you say you're a switch, what you really mean is … you were a dom before, and I'm your first foray onto the other side of things."

"I suppose so."

And, now, she's back to holy shit. Holy _shit_. Holyshitholyshit.

"And you really want to do this," she says, a gust of syllables. "You, the Devil. This is _really_ your fantasy. To just … submit yourself to me. _Me_."

He winks. "Darling, since we met."

The weight of what he's telling her—what he's _offering—_ nearly crushes her. Trust, like glass. Easily broken. She almost _did_ break it, thanks to Kinley's machinations. Which makes her even more resolved to not fuck this up. She might not quite get it. Yet. But she's willing to try. And she doesn't need to totally get a desire to fulfill it. Why _not_ fulfill it, when they have to put on a show regardless?

"Any other questions?" he asks.

"Yeah. What's pegging?"

He snorts. "My, my, _my_ , you really are unscathed by the wilds of the Internet."

"Better things to do, I guess."

"It's when someone dons a strap-on—a dildo, that is—and penetrates a recipient anally."

"And you're"—she blinks—"offering to be a recipient."

"Yes."

"You've been a recipient before."

"Oh, yes. It's delightful! You should try it."

A picture blooms in her mind's eye of him lying on his stomach as she rides him from behind, raking her fingers down the curve of his spine. _Oh, yes,_ he purrs, grabbing tents of his silk sheets. _Oh, yes, oh, yes,_ in a dizzying, exulting crescendo as she pushes into him. The sound of ripping fabric explo—holy fuck. Why does her brain keep inserting Technicolor pornos into an equation that's already at 2+2=precarious? She squirms, uncomfortably aware her panties are wet. Fuck. Fuck, fuck—

"You'll have to peg me when I'm wearing my horns later," Lucifer murmurs beside her, like he knew exactly what she was thinking, and she almost shrieks.

Almost. 

Focusing, she looks at him. The real him. Not the swollen-lipped mussy-haired pornfest sprawled naked in her head. His delighted demeanor makes bravery an easy gamble, makes her forget the intense stigma working with a bunch of cowboys creates for her. 

Lucifer wouldn't ever laugh at her. Not meanly. He wouldn't whisper behind her back at her lack of "education," or call her a slut for having too much. With him, sex is shameless. In a good way. With him, she actually thinks _about_ sex, and that's …. 

"That's …."

"Hot?" he suggests. 

She offers him a shy smile. "Maybe. _Later_."

"How much later?"

"Lucifer."

He laughs. "Yes, yes. Message received. But we _will_ be returning to this subject when I'm unbound. _Later_."

 _Not soon enough_ , her tiny voice proclaims.

For once, her whole brain agrees.

* * *

"Ready to go camping, babe?" Chloe says, grinning at the rearview mirror as Trixie climbs into the back seat.

"Meghan says we get our own tent! Isn't that _cool_?" 

Chloe nods. "Very cool."

"I will never understand the appeal," grumbles Lucifer, shaking his head as they pull away from the curb. "You humans."

"What?" Chloe grins. "Don't like to rough it?"

" _No_."

"But it's fun!" counters Trixie. "We make s'mores and tell ghost stories—"

"Child, there is _no_ such thing as—"

"—and take hikes and sing songs and—Lucifer, how come you're wearing horns?" 

Shit. Chloe hadn't even thought to ask him to hide the headband as they'd pulled into the school's driveway.

A situation only made worse by his oozing grin and delighted purr, "Because I'm horny, clearly."

"Huh?"

Chloe can't quite panic, though, before Lucifer clarifies with an eye roll, "It's a Halloween costume, child." 

Technically true. Chloe fights back the wave of embarrassment threatening to immolate her. 

"But Halloween is over," Trixie says, her face screwing up with confusion. 

"Well, of course it is, with that kind of attitude," he scoffs. "What happened to the power of positive thinking?" 

Chloe's thinking she might positively die of mortification if this conversation continues. 

"How come you can't use your real horns?" says Trixie.

Lucifer's eyes bug out. Chloe chokes. "Um. Trix, that's—"

"Maze used her fun face for Halloween before—"

"My _fun_ face?" Lucifer barks.

" _What_ fun face?" Chloe says.

"—so, why can't Lucifer use his?" Trixie asks.

"Maze has another _face_?"

Trixie rolls her eyes. "Yes, Mom."

Chloe looks helplessly at Lucifer, who can only glower back at her. "What, did you think I had copyright on the idea?" he snarks.

"Well … no, but—" Wow. She asks Trixie, "Are you … okay?"

"Yes, Mom," Trixie replies in a long suffering tone. "Obviously."

Sighing, Lucifer shifts his attention to the rearview mirror. "Child, I do _not_ have horns. That is a stereotype."

"Oh. Okay, then. A tail?"

" _Also_ a stereotype!"

"It's just … a tail would be really cool."

"Cool, is it," he mutters.

"Yeah! You could, like, slap the bad guys with it." She smacks her fist into her palm. "Like _pow!_ And then Mom wouldn't have to shoot them."

His mouth opens. Closes. Opens. Closes again with a clack of teeth. And then he just folds his arms and scowls his affront out the window. 

Chloe turns on the radio for the rest of the drive to Meghan's, trying not to laugh. This is definitely an excellent mompportunity for talking about nonviolence as the preferred solution, but … maybe later. When she can keep a straight face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everybody who takes the time to leave feedback :)


	25. "Detective, may I"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy :)

The exterior of the club, much like Rian Flannery's "toy" store, is nondescript. Just a single metal door in an alley, emblazoned with a sign that says: 21+ NO MINORS ALLOWED in big red letters. Nothing indicates the place is called Dominus. Nothing indicates it's a fetish club, either. Some—not all—of the people entering at odd intervals give hints of what's inside, though. They wear lots of leather. Lots of shiny PVC. Lots and _lots_ of black.

"Are you certain you're ready for this?" Lucifer asks softly beside her as they stand outside. He wears his full ensemble: collar, Devil horns, open-at-the-chest PVC shirt, tight leather pants, and military boots. 

She stares dubiously at the door. Maze's LBS—concealed by Chloe's canvas trench coat—constricts her body in unforgettable ways. "I … think so."

"You've no other questions? No concerns I can allay?"

A couple dressed in black jeans and black t-shirts head through the front door. They look like normal people. _Normal people do this_. She can, too. At the same time her tiny voice screams, _What even is normal anymore? The Devil is your_ slave. 

"Let's just rip the Band-Aid," she says at last.

He laughs. "That's the spirit, Detective." 

And then he opens the door for her.

* * *

They step into a simple foyer area. A sign on the rear wall proclaims D O M I N U S in embossed black lettering. The receptionist—a middle-aged brown-haired man—sits behind a black formica countertop. He brightens as soon as he lays eyes on Lucifer, who animates, in kind. They discuss an entrepreneur endeavor the man is excited about, something Lucifer had apparently helped with. Some salon and tanning—

"Wait, are you Jacques?" Chloe asks. 

Lucifer and the man both look at her in surprise.

"The guy," she continues, snapping her fingers as recollection bites her brain. "The guy who does the great Brazilians?" Lucifer had recommended him to Jonathan, the MRI nurse. 

The receptionist gasps. "My _first_ word-of-mouth recognition!" He glances at Lucifer, blinking like he might cry. "You're the _best_ , dude."

"Nice to meet you," Chloe says, smiling.

"Well _done_ , Detective," Lucifer murmurs against her ear, sounding impressed, "though I suppose your astute observations shouldn't surprise me, at this point."

Jacques, almost bouncing through the rest of the process, checks Chloe's ID and explains the rules, the biggest ones being no sex in the club, and no means no. Just like Lucifer had said. Her eyes widen, though, when "no sex in the club" is specifically expanded to mean: no penetrative intercourse of any kind in any orifice; no unclothed masturbation or unclothed outercourse; no exchange of bodily fluids other than tears or saliva; no direct genital to genital, mouth to genital, or skin to genital contact between two or more individuals.

After giving her a 50% off coupon to his salon, Jacques gestures them into an area with rentable lockers, where she dumps her coat and purse and takes a moment to adjust to the cold air. Then it's back through reception, down a long hallway, to a security guy sitting on a stool by a red velvet curtain. The muted throb of bass underscores the hallway's silence with a four-on-the-floor thump, thump, thump. 

"Remember," Lucifer warns as they approach, "everything you see here is consensual, yes?"

"I understand," she confirms, despite the butterflies kicking in her stomach. She squirms, tugging at the meager bra provided by Maze's LBS. "I'm not some wilting innocent flower, you know. I might not have seen this before, but I can deal."

"Of course." There's no doubt in his tone. Still, he frowns at her. "Detective, are you all right?" 

Chloe contorts, her whole venus flytrap of an ensemble squeaking as she moves. "This stuff chafes."

He chuckles. "You'll break it in, I'm sure. Ready?"

 _Nooo_ , screams her tiny voice. "Yep, all set."

Though he doesn't even try with Lucifer, the security guy stamps the back of her hand with ultraviolet ink. The same pattern that had been on Alastor's body: a stylized triskelion. 

Lucifer pulls back the curtain, revealing a set of matte-black double doors. As he depresses the door handle, the distant thump of bass crescendos into a growling, driving hammer that pounds beneath her sternum. Then they step over the threshold, into another world.

People. Skin. Flesh and leather. Everywhere. 

A blast of gelid air hits her as though she'd stepped into a meat freezer, but in a stride, a swath of body heat eclipses the chill. 

The room smells of incense and sweat. The cadence of voices and the clink of glasses overlay the music. Hightops ring the edges of the space perpendicular to the entry, where the bar is. The farthest wall, beyond the dance floor, isn't a wall, but a plexiglass window. 

Behind the glass, the harsh white cone of a spotlight frames an X-shaped fixture. From the fixture hangs a naked man. He wears only a ball gag and spiked collar, each of his limbs fastened to its respective point on the X, which leaves him spread-eagled for the woman smacking his scrotum with a riding crop. The plexiglass mutes the sounds, but the woman seems like she's laughing, her face a rictus of unrestrained glee, and the man seems like he's screaming, his torso jerking with each impact of the whip. In his left hand he clutches a purple rag. 

"One of the 'private' dungeons," Lucifer murmurs by her ear. "For voyeurs and exhibitionists alike, and those who enjoy humiliation play." Chloe can barely stop herself from gaping. "That setup is known as a Saint Andrew's Cross. Since the sub is gagged, the rag is his safe word. If he drops it, he's opting out."

"O … kay," she says, trying to keep her tone neutral. 

She doesn't get it. She just … doesn't get how something like that could be enjoyable. To anyone. _Ever_. But … she stares fixedly at the clutched rag. Consent. Right there in his hand. She can't argue with that.

The crop strikes the man's balls, and his knees flinch toward each other, like he's trying to close his legs, but restrained to the cross, he can't move to that degree. Yet even as he drools from crying, he clutches the rag. 

She forces herself to look away. At the rest of the room. 

An empty high top shines like a beacon about three-quarters down the left-hand wall. Someone bumps her shoulder. A leather-clad man walks past, leading a naked woman by a leash.

Do not gape, Chloe tells herself. Do not gape. Do _not_ gape.

She takes a step toward— 

"Are you open?" says a sultry, feminine voice to Chloe's left. 

A slender 5-foot-nothing woman with curly red hair stares hopefully back at her. She sports a lacy negligee, stilettos, and bare legs. 

"Open for what?" Chloe asks.

The redhead's eyes widen. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought …." She glances at Lucifer, and then at Chloe, holding up her hands, as if to say, _Peace_. "Really sorry. Have fun, you two."

"Wait!" Chloe says.

The woman raises her eyebrows expectantly.

Chloe pulls Alastor's DMV photo from her boot. "Have you seen this man before? We're—"

The redhead retreats without glancing at the picture. "Sorry," is all she says. "Sorry, I shouldn't have butted in." 

Lucifer looms behind. "The table, Detective," he mumbles as the redhead scurries off.

Nodding, Chloe claims a chair as soon as she's within grabbing distance. Lucifer sidles beside her instead of sitting. The heat of his body presses close to her neck and ear. "She was asking if you're open for play, Detective." 

"She was … really forward."

"I've a long history with this club," he replies. "I'm usually a more-the-merrier sort. Probably why she assumed her inquiry would be welcome."

Morbid curiosity burgeons. "Did you recognize her?" 

"I did not. And I doubt you'll get anyone to answer questions if you don't at least _attempt_ to fit in."

A man wearing nothing but nipple clamps walks past with a beer in hand. "Lucifer, I don't know how. This is—" So … _so_ far beyond what she imagined, despite all the details he'd filled in for her. 

Lucifer nuzzles her, his stubble tickling her neck. "You've the Devil at your command, darling. Tell me to do something for you."

"But what do I even …?"

He sighs. "Detective, the red bracelets Jacques mentioned are at the front." A quick unambiguous symbol for: not interested. "We passed right by them." He gestures back in the direction they'd come. "Might I suggest we partake, if you're uncomfortable with being solicited?"

"Yeah, let's—"

"Detective," Lucifer admonishes softly, " _command_ me. Show them you own me tonight. Sell the not-quite-charade, or we will fail."

She turns to him. He's waiting. Poised to fulfill her desires. Hers. The edges of his open shirt frame his sternum. His navel. _Hers_. 

An urge to lay hands on him nearly overwhelms her. She tries to stuff her fists into her pockets instead, but she has no fucking pockets, because Maze's LBS is like six tiny strips of leather. She grips the edge of the chair as though she'll die if she doesn't. Maybe she will. A cracking syllable begins and ends in her throat before making a word. 

Her attention flicks to the plexiglass wall. The man is still there, still naked, still bound to the cross. Still scream— 

"Detective, I've a safe word, and I've not said it. We've negotiated terms already." Lucifer strokes his fingers sinuously down the edge of his shirt. "Do as you will. It's quite all right. I'm all right, in this context."

"But this isn't _me."_

"Not _that_ , no," he agrees, nodding toward the man hanging from the cross. 

Which leaves an unspoken but. Not that, no, but this? _Yes_. 

"Pretend we're at work," Lucifer continues before she can ponder his meaning fully. "We _are_ at work. And I _desire_ this."

Lucifer desires.

The huskiness with which he admits it makes her quiver inside.

"P-please," she stammers, "get us some wristbands?"

He rolls his eyes. "Oh, say it like you mean it, will you?"

"Get us some wristbands," she demands, emboldened.

A slow, wolfish smile tugs at his mouth, even as the compulsion sends a flash of desperation searing across his face. Guilt stabs, but she holds her tongue, sits on her hands, and regards him with what she hopes is a stern, expectant look.

"As you desire, _Mistress_ ," he says in a voice that carries, as he shifts into his role of sub. 

Heads turn. 

He backs away from her, genuflecting like someone trying to escape royalty, before heading toward the entrance. Next to the door on the farthest corner of the bar rests a box labeled, "Red=NO!" There's a sign on the wall above, too, that adds, "Failure to abide by the color system will result in IMMEDIATE EXPULSION."

Lucifer fishes two plastic baggies containing sterilized red bracelets from the box before turning to face her. The leather collar encircling his throat rests just below his Adam's apple. The plastic Devil horns she gave him reflect the flashing lights. From across the room, he watches her with unblinking eyes, his focus unwavering. Her lower body tightens as he stalks back like a barely restrained tiger. 

_Her_ barely restrained tiger. 

Hers.

Thrill and disgust shiver through her in equal measure.

"Lucifer, I—" 

He drops to his knees in front of her. Thanks to the hightop, his new vantage point puts him eye level with her knees. Her heartbeat kicks up a notch, but she doesn't cross her legs, though she should because, hello, working, not fucking. But maybe going to Hell for wasting taxpayer dollars on BDSM with the Devil is a good thing, given the Devil part. Relationship goals. And, holy fuck, what is she even— 

He looks up at her, a question gleaming in his gaze. 

Work, she tells herself. Work, work, work. They're pretending. Just _pretending_ she owns him to achieve a goal. And he consented to the game. He _wants_ to play.

She holds out her wrist for him, raising her eyebrows expectantly. Just putting on a show. She's an actor. She can do that. 

He tears open one of the plastic baggies containing a bracelet and slips her fingers through the thick rubber band. Carefully pushing it down her wrist, marking her as a "no" for everyone in the club, he presses a kiss to her palm before leaning back, still on his knees. 

"Give me the other bag," she tells him.

With a soft, "Yes, Mistress," he does. 

Hearing him call her Mistress again sucks all the air out of the room. Heat creeps across her face. Down her neck. Makes her limbs tingle. She opens the remaining bag, putting the refuse on the table. 

"Wrist," she commands. 

"Yes, Mistress," he repeats, and his arm drifts up, forming a hook at the wrist like he's some kind of marionette.

She slides the red band over his hand, pushing it onto his wrist. His skin is warm. And soft. She lingers, a lump burgeoning in her throat as she rubs her thumb gently along the tendons in his forearm. She's missed having free license to touch him. She's missed … everything.

"Hi," she whispers, unable to stop herself.

He smiles like she lit the stars for him, though he says nothing, and the room fades a little, becoming a nonentity, becoming empty, except for him. She strokes his palm. His fingers. And he lets her. From the look on his face and the absence of safe words, he's more than letting her. He likes it. 

She presses her hand to his cheek. He leans into her touch, nuzzling her hand. 

"Yes," he murmurs, almost too soft to carry over the bass beat. "Yes, good. Show them all, Detective."

She pushes her fingers along his temple, through his hair—mindful of the horns—stroking him. Petting him. And he lets her. 

This is so wrong. But ….

She cups his chin, tipping his face toward her. He stares into her eyes, captivated, like everything else is gone for him, too. The space between her legs pulses. Throbs. All at once, she feels empty. Empty and needing, which … no. 

No. No way. She clears her throat, blurting, "Get me a drink." If only to shove him out of her proximity for a second.

His expression twitches. A grimace, barely concealed. The conflagration of longing unfurling in his gaze sends pangs of regret resonating through her like plucked violin strings. He rises to his feet, pulled along by his need to serve her. Pulled along by the compulsion. 

"As you desire, Mistress," he purrs, the words sloping down her spine like he's stroking her with his hand. 

She clutches the chair legs with her ankles. Her thighs are shaking, and her breaths coil tightly in her chest although she's barely moved. Her panties feel damp. Uncomfortable. She squirms a little. 

Holy shit, is she actually turned on by this?

The woman who'd been administering "delicious" torture at the Saint Andrew's Cross is helping down her sagging, spent submissive. When she unties his wrists, he drips to the ground like a fluid rather than a solid person. She hands him a water bottle and wraps him in a towel, cradling him against her. The scene seems … almost loving. 

Which is all kinds of mixed up. Chloe can't reconcile love and torture together. She can't reconcile love and ownership, either. And, yet—

Lucifer sets a glass in front of her. Some pink, bubbling liquid with two maraschino cherries speared on toothpicks. He doesn't sit.

"What is it?" she asks. 

"A virgin Shirley Temple, Mistress."

"Really? No alcohol?"

"You're working, Mistress," he says with an easy shrug. 

"Wow." She laughs a little. "We should've played this game sooner."

That happy smile oozes across his face again. He inches closer. Well into her space. His second-skin—er … _pants,_ she totally meant pants _—_ leave nothing to the imagination. Nothing. Leather creaks as he pushes closer, and closer, until the button and zipper at his waist digs into her bare midriff. He nuzzles her, scents her, pressing his nose against her hair and taking a long, relaxed whiff.

Tensing, she splays a palm against his abdomen, nudging him back. "Lucifer," she almost hisses, " _no_. Too much."

"Apologies, Mistress."

He drops to his knees on the floor again, this time in child's pose, silent, waiting. Like … before. The day after he'd first arrived. When she'd kept inadvertently punishing him, and he'd been so overcome by need, he'd lain at her feet and begged. Except he's not begging now. He's calm. Willingly submitting himself. Not being dragged to the floor by a compulsion he can't escape.

Unnerved, she looks away. The couple at the table closest to them aren't wearing the red wrist bands. God, she hopes Lucifer decorating the floor like a doormat is enough to convince them. 

"Stay," she tells Lucifer before sliding off the chair. 

He remains with his nose pressed against the floor, the horns atop his head pointing straight at her feet. She can't ignore the little thrill the sight of him submissive brings. 

The man and woman sitting equidistant from each other at the next table both sport leather bodices and spiked heels. They both nurse drinks—the man some kind of draft beer, the woman a yellow-colored cocktail with a cherry in it. They both sit at the same height. Neither touches the other. No body language suggests one of them is playing dominant over the other. Two dominants, looking for more? Or, perhaps they're just not roleplaying yet. Does a Dom/sub relationship have an off switch? 

"Excuse me," Chloe says, just loud enough to be heard over the music, careful not to direct her attention to either one specifically. Careful not to assume. "Excuse me, I'm wondering if you could help me?"

The two of them turn, the man taking another sip of his beer as he regards her. Chloe pulls the photo of Alastor Blackthorn from her boot again and places it on the table. "Have either of you seen this man before? I'm trying to find info on—"

"Not interested," the woman says.

"I'm not asking if you're interested or open; I'm asking if you've seen—"

"She said not interested," the man chimes in, his tone flat but stern.

Great. Chloe scoops up the photo again. Her instincts tell her not to press. Not if she wants to make headway with this crowd. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"No problem," says the man, shrugging.

The woman sips her drink. 

Lucifer remains where Chloe left him. On the floor. His arms stretched out in front of his head like he's praying at her altar. His biceps shake, and his breaths are ragged, though. Like something is wrong. 

"Color?" she prompts him.

"Green." 

Despite his lack of safe word, he sounds … strained. She steps in front of him. "Look at me," she demands, and his attention swivels upward. "Color?"

He doesn't blink when he repeats, "Green."

"Get off the floor."

He rises to his knees again, not breaking eye contact. His gaze is hooded, almost heady with intensity. She cups his face, stroking the sharp ridge of his left cheekbone with the pad of her thumb. His breaths tighten. 

"Color?" she prompts again.

"Green, Detective. I assure you."

"Then … what's the problem?"

He sways on his knees like he can't quite hold still anymore. "Please, may I touch you, Detective?"

"Are you playing? Or can you literally not touch me all of the sudden?"

"Both," he murmurs. 

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Somehow, she'd sabotaged his freedom to interact with things again. And she'd left her phone in the locker, so she can't check the command she'd used.

"Lucifer, I can't fix it right now," she cautions under her breath. Not without risking sending him into catch-22 convulsions in the middle of the fucking club. "I—"

" _Please_ ," he rasps like he didn't even hear her, the word just shy of desperate, "Detective, may I touch you? May I … worship you?"

Her insides tighten into a hurting ball as the Lucifer in her mind's eye laves every inch of her with kisses. As he puts his hands between her legs and strokes her to climax. Yes, she wants to scream. Worship me. She shifts, the heel of her boot plinking against the floor, as she tries to focus on something else. _Anything_ else. 

"G-rated touching only," she commands.

"As you desire," he says, inching closer, his body a hair's breath from hers. 

"Then, yes. Worship me."

His tiny grimace is not so tiny this time, and he tenses. Sweat pearls across his forehead. At the nape of his neck. "Yes, Detective," he says, a breathless sob.

And then he undulates to the floor again, relaxing when he presses his lips against the soft leather of her boot. 

"Color?" she prompts, at a loss.

"Green."

He cups her thigh through the boot and strokes down to her foot. His skin is warm, even through the leather. He kisses her toes, and then the ball of her ankle, and her calf and knee, finally pressing his lips to her inner thigh as he situates himself between her legs. 

The air leaves her in a rush. Oh, God. Oh, _God_. "G-rated, Lucifer," she gasps. "Please."

"Is this not G-rated, Mistress?" he asks.

Perhaps, for him, it might be. "Inner thighs are off limits."

"Yes, Mistress." He scoots back an inch or two before reaching for her boot's zip—

"No taking anything off!" 

"Yes, Mistress." He pulls her foot into his lap to massage her.

She bites down on a pleased moan, unable to stop herself from curling her toes against the sole of her boot. Blush spreads like wildfire. He stares, hanging off her every twitch, every sigh.

"Stop looking at me like that," she says.

Agony flashes on his face. "Like what?" 

"Like I'm edible."

He diverts his gaze to the floor beside her chair. But his touch. His _touch_. Oh, God. She twists, squirming in place. His fingers start to shake. _She_ starts to shake. 

"Please," he says, the word soft. 

"Please, what?"

He strokes her calf. "Please, Detective, have I been good?"

"Color?" she asks again.

"Green." He bites his lip suggestively. "Please, have I been good?"

"Lucifer, we're practically in _public_."

"Isn't that the bloody point?" 

"But—"

"Let them see me come, if they like. The Devil isn't modest. _Please._ "

The bulge in his pants makes his arousal plain. She can't imagine what he feels like, suddenly unable to touch himself, repeatedly crushed by need and dissatisfaction. But does he seriously want her to send him over the cliff in view of the entire club? Is he still playing, or has the compulsion gone off the rails? This is wrong. This is so wrong. And she's just … letting it be wrong. 

… Is _it wrong?_ her tiny voice asks.

Her lower body throbs. She tips his head back. His dark, desirous eyes are still diverted to the side. As she commanded.

"Look at me," she tells him.

He doesn't look. His ribs compress. A deep, rumbling moan shivers in his chest. But he doesn't look. He contorts in her grasp. 

"Please," he begs, his lips twisting in an almost snarl. " _Please_."

"Why won't you look?"

"Because I _do_ desire you, and I can't not look at you that way. _Please_."

"But … why didn't my second ask just overwrite?"

"It did."

Oh. Oh, shit. He's fighting the compulsion to comply in spirit. For _her_. To _play_. A catch-22 of his own making.

She squeezes his chin, bunching up his lower lip as she bites back on an apology. Doms don't apologize, do they? She adjusts her command to, "Look at me however you want."

His gaze shifts to hers. His eyes are traps. Windows into a tangled maelstrom of tumbling emotions. His soul is older than the planet propping up her boots. And yet he wants her. _Her_. With the sharp, crystal clarity of stars in the abyss. 

"Why do you desire me?" she asks.

"Because I love you."

His words bloom like a rose in her gut—beautiful, thorned. "Because of the compulsion."

"Because I _love_ you," he counters, smoldering. 

"How can you be sure?" How can _she_ be sure.

"You _told_ me you wanted me to choose whether to love you more than you wanted me to actually love you," he says, "and I have. I did."

 _Loving you is_ , he'd said.

 _Pre-existing affection_.

_Eve was never my first love._

Memories mingle with the present. The fist behind her sternum squeezes and squeezes. "I did say that, didn't I? I …."

His lip twitches. The beginnings of a pained smile. "Thoughts of a good shag might be filling me to my bloody eyeballs, but that's hardly reason to lie."

"You don't lie," she says thickly. "I know."

"I chose long before _any_ of this." He sags, stopping just short of draping himself against her knees like a blanket. "Please, Mistress," he begs, his breaths tight and shallow. "Please, have I been good?"

"Color?"

"Green."

The world becomes his stark brown eyes. Her morning star.

"Please," he croaks, the word ragged. " _Please, Detective_."

The bass pounds. 

Heat blossoms across her skin, coiling in her belly. 

"Yes," she soothes, at last. "Yes, you've been _very_ good." 

" _Oh_ ," he says, a throaty exultation, before a deep, dragging inhalation overtakes him. When he arches backward, the muscles in his abdomen tensing, she lets go of his chin. He flails for her, for anything to hold onto. She snatches his palms and squeezes them instead, holding him upright. For a moment, he hangs there. When he snaps forward, his lower body pulses against the chair leg. A muffled, disassembled grunt fills the space between them. He stares at her, unabashed as he finds his release. His relief.

"You're so good," she says. "You're such a good Devil."

Another shockwave hits him before his eyes roll back, and he droops against her with a sigh, boneless in more ways than one. His face pressed against her knees, he sighs, deep and relaxed. Liquid. She strokes his arm. His hair. The sweaty nape of his neck.

"You're the best partner I've ever had," she murmurs as the capper, sending him over again. "You're perfect. And I love you, too."

He tenses with a hitching, low-pitched grunt that catches wetly in his throat and barely registers over the music. His groin and quads twitch. He re-settles like a displaced wave, the rhythm of his whole-body spasms gradually spacing out, shallowing out, until they fade. 

_Mine,_ her tiny voice whispers. _Mine, and no one else's._

And then the club comes back into her awareness. The bass. The bodies. She remembers she's sitting on a chair in the middle of a crowded bar, giving multiple orgasms to her Devil when she's supposed to be solving a murder. 

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

He's draped against her legs like a human shawl, his glassy, half-lidded eyes giving him an almost comatose appearance. She's so turned on—her lower body so tight—she can't help but shift anxiously in place. Heat licks her skin. What the hell is _wrong_ with her? She takes a gulp of her Shirley Temple. And another, and another. 

"Color?" she asks.

Lucifer doesn't move, seemingly happy to float in post-orgasmic lassitude. She grabs his shoulder. Gives him a shake. "Color?" 

He smiles like he's drunk. 

"Lucifer. Color?"

"… Oh. Green."

"Well, go clean yourself up or something," she snaps.

"Yes, Detective," he mumbles, climbing to his feet, and then glides away. 

"May I ask what toy you used on your sub?" a male voice questions over her shoulder.

She turns. The man she'd tried to question earlier at the other table. The one wearing the stilettos and bodice. Smoky eyeliner and shadow frames his pale eyes. He's about 6'2", just shy of Lucifer's height. His hair is waist-length, dyed electric blue. 

"What?" she says.

"What device did you use on your sub?" he repeats. "I've tried a few, but I've _never_ had results like that on _anyone._ "

"What … device?"

His penciled black brow creases. "What device did you insert?"

She gives him a blank look.

"A prostate massager," he continues, "or …?"

"Oh. Ohhh. Um." Holy fuck. She laughs nervously. "Nothing?"

The man snorts. "Sure."

"No, really, I didn't use"—at his increasingly incredulous look, she winces—"I mean it was this three-in-one thing I grabbed off Amazon. Remote controlled. I don't remember the name of it; had it for years." 

"Really."

"Yep." She tries to recall the specs of things she'd seen at the fetish shop. "A cock ring and insertable vibrator in one piece. It's black and red. Lucifer _loves_ it."

The man laughs again. "Lucifer."

"I know, right? What were his parents thinking?"

"I suppose that fits with the fake horns," says the man with a grin. 

"Yeah, he has a lot of fun with it, at least. Plays up the whole Devil thing. Grants people favors."

"You know," the man says, nodding, "I'd _heard_ the Devil liked this club, but I thought everybody was joking." 

"Nope! The Devil is truly in our midst."

They share another laugh. The man holds out a hand, his nails manicured with shiny black polish. "I'll have to look for that vibrator. I'm Kyle."

"Chloe." 

He hovers as if debating something. She sips her drink, trying to give off nonchalant vibes. 

"So … who were you looking for, earlier?" Kyle asks, brushing his hair out of his face. "You had a picture."

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Not a sir."

She tilts her head. "Huh?"

"I prefer they/them."

"Oh," she says. "Sorry."

They shrug. "Not a problem. So … you had a picture?"

Chloe nods, liberating the picture from her boot again. The photo is wrinkled now—stained by sweat. But it's still intact enough to show Alastor Blackthorn's rounded facial features and dark hair color. He has a bit of a double chin, but his expression is kind, even on his driver's license. 

"I'm looking for information on this man," she says. "One of my sources suggested he may have come here to test out a sex toy he'd commissioned." 

Kyle scrutinizes the photo. "You a cop or something?" 

Her instincts tell her to stick with the truth tonight. Lucifer hadn't exactly been consistent with calling her Mistress instead of Detective. She wants these people to trust her, and trust isn't born from a cover story. "A homicide detective," she admits. "Chloe Decker. This man was murdered. I'm looking to get him some justice, since he can't get it for himself anymore." 

"You think someone here could have killed him?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out." She regards Kyle, imploring. "Listen, I don't want to cause trouble. I'm not here to police kinks."

"Yeah, I figured that out when you had your sub so deconstructed he was humping the chair leg." 

She chokes back on a cough. "Um. Yeah." Good point.

Kyle stares at the photo for about thirty seconds, their blue-eyed gaze piercing, before they shake their head. "I'm sorry, I really don't recognize this dude."

"How long have you been coming here?"

They shrug. "Maybe six months?"

On a hunch, she pulls out the photo that had jogged both Lucifer's and Mr. Flannery's memory. The one of Mr. Blackthorn's penis, still enclosed in the Kali's Teeth device. "What about this? Do you recognize this?"

Kyle tenses. "This man died during a scene?"

"We don't have any reason to believe this was a scene. Our working theory is that someone deceived him into consenting by making him think it would be one."

Kyle glares at the photo. "Someone who came here, if so. Someone who _lied_."

"It's just a theory," she assures them. "We have zero confirmation." 

They pick up the photos. "Can I take these for a sec?"

"I …." She wishes she'd thought to bring more copies, but where would she have put them? Her corset thing barely has room in it for breasts. Her boots, the two photos she _did_ bring. But her gut is screaming at her to let Kyle take what they're asking for. If this club is a tight-knit community, members will be way more willing to talk to a regular than a newbie, no matter that she can send the literal Devil into orgasmic shambles at her feet. "I need them back before I leave tonight."

"Yup." They snatch the two photos, tucking them against their chest. "Just one sec."

Their heels clomp against the floor as they sashay away, melting into the crowd in several paces, save for their blue-haired head. Chloe finishes the rest of her drink in a few gulps, setting it back on the table with a clink. The desire that had wound through her body is gone now, replaced by the cold ache of sexual frustration. Which … must be what Lucifer has been feeling all week. 

She massages her left trapezius and then futzes with the chafing leather. Contrary to what Lucifer had told her, she is _not_ breaking in the LBS. Rather, the other way around.

Heat presses against her back. 

A discombobulated squeak of surprise ejects from her throat. Dark irises hover an inch away—he stares at her like he's inspecting the inner-workings of a flower.

"Lucifer!" she says.

He presses closer, nuzzl—

"No," she tells him, pushing him back. "Sit."

He drops to the floor without hesitation.

"I meant on a _chair_! _"_

He slinks to the seat across from her. He doesn't touch the table, only the hightop chair, sitting straight as a flagpole as he stares at her, unblinking in his adoration. 

"Color?" she prompts.

Nothing.

"Lucifer. Lucifer, color?"

"Green, Detective," he murmurs dreamily. 

She presses her face into her hands, peering at him through the cracks in her fingertips. He's still staring at her like she's his universe.

"What on earth's with you?" she asks.

He doesn't answer. 

"Lucifer." Nothing. " _Lucifer._ " Nothing. She leans across the table and claps in front of his nose. "Lucifer!" 

Finally, a soft but distant, "… Yes, Detective?" 

"Color?"

"Green."

"Then what on earth is _with_ you?" 

He smiles languidly, swaying a little. A heavy sigh drags his frame. 

"Are you _high_?" 

He doesn't answer.

"Subspace," Kyle says over her shoulder, and she turns to find them standing beside her, a fresh pale ale in hand.

"What did you say?" she asks. 

Kyle nods at Lucifer. "You dumped him into subspace. Usually happens from pain play—like … it's physiological?—but sometimes when a sub is really into whatever you're dishing, it'll happen, then, too. That's more psychological, though."

"That's an actual thing?" 

"Just be careful," Kyle replies with a shrug. "Subs can forget their safe words when they're like that." 

Her gut drops as she stares at Lucifer with new comprehension. He _is_ high. Deliriously willing. Robbed of intelligent thought. Her slave. Literally. Which … is exactly what she's been trying to avoid this whole fucking week.

"How do I fix it?" she asks. 

Another shrug. "What goes up must come down eventually. I usually play with people who don't want it fixed. Did you guys not talk about this beforehand or something?" 

"No, he didn't mention it." She wonders if Lucifer had even considered this might be possible. If it's usually a pain play thing—a human sub thing—maybe it's never happened to him before, because when he'd subbed he was never really submitting and definitely not in pain. The implications form a mountain she doesn't want to climb right now. Fuck. "This … isn't usually how he plays. And I've _never_ played before."

Kyle gives her an understanding look. "Hey, we all start somewhere. Just … don't do anything intense right now. Make sure he stays hydrated. Give him a little TLC if you can. And definitely don't leave him alone until he comes down, and you're sure he's okay. The crash can suck." 

"Okay. Okay, I can do that." Her face heats. "Sorry, this is, like, so incredibly TMI, I'm sure." The naked nipple-clamp guy walks past again. In a room with a window into a sex dungeon. "Er … I guess the litmus test for TMI in here is raised a little."

A small snicker tugs at Kyle's lips before their expression turns grave, and they offer the photos of Mr. Blackthorn back to her. "Listen. He didn't want to talk to you in here, but I found someone who might have some info. He's waiting outside. Ask for Malik." 

"Really?" She returns the photos to her boot. "Thank you."

"No problem," Kyle says. "Hope you catch this asshole." 

"Me, too." 

"Maybe we'll see you around here more?" The hopefulness in Kyle's tone—genuine enthusiasm for a new friend, if she's reading things right—makes her smile despite herself.

"Maybe," she allows. "It was nice to meet you!"

"Likewise." 

With a nod, Kyle struts dramatically back into the crowd, and she loses track of them. 

Which just leaves Lucifer. _What goes up must come down._ Great. "Lucifer, c'mon." She jabs her thumb toward the door. "We got a lead."

He drifts to his feet without hesitation, his expression glassy-eyed and drunk-y. Slinking along like her shadow, he falls into step behind her. Which is just … weird. 

But then … so's this whole damned night so far. At least, on the Chloe Decker litmus test for sanity pre-Satan. Which … she's starting to realize she should have ditched years ago. The new bar should be set at 6'3".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>    
>  [Art by swank_kat](https://swankkat.tumblr.com/)   
> 


	26. "cracking good foreplay"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments :) I really appreciate the feedback!

Malik no-last-name is waiting for them in the alley, leaning against the wall opposite the club. He's about 5'10", his hair shaved razor-close to his skull, his muscular body decked head to toe in black.

"Look, I don't want no trouble," he says, holding up gloved hands as his wary gaze shifts between Chloe and Lucifer. "Specially not from _you_."

She huddles in her coat. "Sir, I promise, we're not here to give you any grief." 

Malik's gaze ticks toward the mouth of the alley as though he's debating walking away. She steps aside, clearing the path for him to flee if he wants, but Lucifer's body looms large behind her like an attack angel in leather, barely brought to heel. 

After restoring his ability to interact with things and making him hydrate, she'd tried in the locker room to bump him out of this "subspace" thing, but … it's like he's absent from his own head. Just staring. Waiting for the next order she gives. 

She'd tried telling him, _Red!_

But he'd only replied woozily, _Green_.

And unfortunately, _Lucifer, snap out of it!_ had only resulted in him trying to undo his pants, which she'd eighty-sixed immediately with an almost-hissed, _Not what I meant!_

"Lucifer, walk to the end of the alley and _stay_ ," she tells him, guilt coiling. 

"Yes, Detective," Lucifer mumbles before gliding gracefully toward the nexus of brick and mortar where the pavement ends. He stops only when his nose bumps the wall. Then he doesn't move. Doesn't turn around. Exactly as commanded, he keeps the tip of his Roman nose pressed to clay. 

Her gut twists. God, he really is just … gone. 

Malik, at least, seems to relax. Almost appears impressed by Lucifer's "good behavior." 

"He's my sub," Chloe soothes again, despite the way her stomach flutters over using that word. "Not a cop like me. I promise no trouble for you. I just want justice for the murder victim."

"Long as your so-called 'justice' don't include me," Malik grumbles. "Kyle promised me you was cool."

"I assure you, it doesn't, and I am. I'm not even planning to take down your name, just whatever details you can offer me about my suspect."

Malik takes another wary look down the alley. "So … yeah. I seen your boy leave with a woman last Friday. Caught my eye cuz I kinda know her."

Chloe nods, careful to keep her phone in plain view for him as she finger-types. "When did you see them go?"

"Mmm. Bout 7, I'd guess. Maybe 8."

"How do you know her?"

"Almost did a scene with her a few months ago."

"Almost?"

He shrugs. "Got a bad vibe. Backed out last minute."

"You got a bad vibe," Chloe asks, "or she did?" 

"I did."

"Can you tell me what gave you the bad vibe?"

"Nah," he says, shaking his head. "Just a gut feeling, and I trust my gut. Gotta be safer than safe this day 'n age, y'know?"

"I do know," she agrees. "Was the woman upset you backed out?"

"Nah, don't think so. Happens sometimes. People don't click. Ain't nothin' personal."

"Can you describe her?"

"More than that—got her name," Malik says. "Or, the name she told me, anyway."

"Which is?"

"Piper."

"Did you get her last name?"

"Nah."

 _Alias Piper_ , Chloe types. "And what does Piper look like?"

Malik thinks, his eyes squinting at the light-polluted sky. "Know that useless space counselor?" he says unexpectedly. "The one on _Star Trek_ who always be like … _I sense great pain, Captain_? Like it's some extra woke shit even when the guy she talkin' about already be screamin' and cryin'."

Chloe glances at Lucifer, but he's still on Neptune, his face pressed to brick. "I'm sorry; I don't watch _Star Trek_ ," she says, turning back to Malik. "Can you give me a physical description of this woman?"

"Yeah." Malik nods at her phone, as if cueing her to typing. "Almost my height."

"Show me?"

Malik puts a hand in the air at his eye height. "Like this, I think." 

"Is that with or without boots?"

Malik frowns. "Good point." He readjusts his estimate to chin height. "More like this, without those heels."

"So … about five foot four." Like the woman Mark Schofield reported seeing with Mr. Blackthorn. 

Malik nods, continuing, "She white as snow but her hair be black. Like dyed, not natch. Down to mid-back. Curly, too." He smacks his lips and whistles. "God, she bangin' like you don't even _know_."

 _Attractive. Caucasian. 5'4". Curly black hair, possibly dyed or wig,_ Chloe finger types. "How often is Piper in the club?"

"I ain't seen her since she left with your boy, and she pretty noticeable, like I said."

"Okay. Can you think of anything else that might help our investigation?"

His frown deepens. "You don't want her address or none?"

"You have her address?"

"Shit, I ain't goin' home with no strange woman who gonna tie me up and hurt me if I dunno where," Malik scoffs. "I _always_ text my wingman the address. S'a safety thing."

"I guess I just assumed you'd rent a dungeon here."

"You got any idea how fuckin' expensive it is to do a scene up in here?"

"Sorry," she rushes to say. "Sorry, yes, I'd love Piper's address."

Fumbling for his phone, Malik shows her the text he sent to his "wingman." A Hollywood Hills address about fifteen minutes from here. This is a bigger lead than she'd ever dreamed of. 

"Did you go there?" she asks, taking a photo of the text message Malik sent. "Or is this just what she told you?"

"Nah, yeah, it's there," Malik assures her. "I vibed on the front stoop by the koi pond."

"Is it a house? A condo?"

He snorts. "More like a fuckin' palace. Might be why I vibed, come to think."

"Okay." Chloe can _definitely_ understand that. The one percenters in Hollywood Hills live on another planet. Lucifer included, really. "Okay. Malik, thank you. Sincerely. This was extremely helpful."

"Hey, if she guilty? She don't belong here. So, you do your thing." Malik presses his lips into a grim line. "Just leave me outta it."

"Absolutely, thank you." She shifts on her aching feet. No practical brown boots tonight. "Malik, may I give you my business card? In case you think of something else?"

"Yeah. Aight."

"Call me anytime, day or night," she tells him. 

He fists the card, crumpling it a little as he stuffs it into his front jacket pocket. Then, with a nod, he returns to the club. Chloe fights not to jump or grin, instead staying calm until Malik is well out of sight. As the door closes, she turns to Lucifer, and any levity she had drains like she's filter paper. He's still there. Still standing with his big body pressed to brick. Fuck.

"Lucifer!" she calls down the alley. "Will you c'mere?"

"If you desire it, Detective," he replies, unmoving.

"I do, please, yeah," she clarifies, trying not to scream in frustration.

He peels himself from the wall and strides in her direction. He doesn't speak. His eyes are still glassy. 

A sinking sensation overcomes her. If Kyle had spoken truth, Lucifer will snap out of it on his own, eventually. But … how long is _eventually_?

"Follow me," she adds, and he does.

 _Fuck her life_.

* * *

"Lucifer," she says once they're in the car, seatbelts buckled. "Lucifer, I need you to wake up."

"I am awake, Detective."

She grips the steering wheel to the point of pain. "No, I need you to be present."

"I am present, Detective."

"No, I need you to be _you_."

"I _am_ me, Detective."

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Shivering, she turns on the heater, hunkering down in her jacket. The nighttime temperature had dropped like an anchor off a boat, and she's not wearing many layers. Leather squeaks. He wraps around—

"I don't need an angel coat!" she snaps.

He pulls away, resettling in his seat. "Yes, Detective."

He doesn't even sound disappointed. His glassy gaze fixates on the windshield. The heaters blast. She narrows her eyes at his bare arms and chest and abdomen. He isn't shivering, but ….

"Are _you_ warm enough?" she asks, wanting to kick herself for not asking sooner. "Do you need anything?"

"Only you, Detective."

A suspect answer if ever there was one. "Stay."

"Yes, Detective."

She gets out, walking around to the trunk to pull out some of her emergency kit—a warm blanket and a water bottle. Like she'd seen the dom in the plexiglass dungeon do for the man on the cross. She returns to the passenger-side door.

"Get out for a sec," Chloe demands, and he does, looking at her with radiant adoration. She wraps the fluffy blanket over his shoulders. "Now, sit back down. In the car. Sit back down in the car."

He does. She buckles him in. 

"Drink this, okay?" she says, proffering the water bottle to him. 

The plastic crinkles in the silence as he accepts. She closes his door, heading back around to the driver's side. The water's gone by the time she's behind the wheel again.

The address Malik gave Chloe burns in her memory. A quick check on her work phone had confirmed the house is owned by one Piper Abernathy, so Malik wasn't blowing smoke. Piper's DMV photo had revealed, also like Malik said, a pretty woman with luscious spirals of black hair. Listed height, five foot five. Everything matches, and Chloe wants to check out the house while she's in the area. Just a quick pass to gauge the place. 

Still … she can't take Lucifer to a potential suspect's house when Lucifer's not in control of his faculties. With her luck, that'd be the occasion guns come out, and someone gets shot. She can't just drop Lucifer off, either, since her place in Venice Beach is way more than a quarter mile from Hollywood Hills—he’d be frozen in place if she left. Not to mention the schlep there and back would be a ginormous waste of time.

"Lucifer, I need you to _focus_ ," she tries.

"I am focused, Detective." 

"Not just on me. On _everything_!"

"Yes, Detective," he says. Right away. His expression seems to sharpen, at last. "Anything you desire." 

She regards him suspiciously. "Lucifer?"

"Yes, Detective?"

"You good now?"

He looks straight at her and smiles. "Of course, Detective. Always, for you."

Alarm bells are ringing, but …. "You're sure?"

"Yes, Detective."

"Color?"

"Green."

Traffic swishes past. She pulls away from the curb. Something isn't right, her brain is screaming. Something isn't right at all. But he says nothing to dissuade her from going. She drives through three green lights and then hits a red before he sucks in a breath, a soft, suffering sound collecting in his throat. His shoulder thumps against the window as he brings his knees an inch toward his chest. Like he's struggling not to curl into a fetal position.

"Lucifer?"

"Anything you desire, Mistress," he moans breathlessly.

 _Fuck_. Fuck. Fuckity …. Tires screeching, she turns onto a side street and pulls against the curb. What had she said wrong? 

"Sorry," she stammers. "Sorry, uh … I—" 

_Focus. Not just on me_. _On everything!_

Fuck. Fuck, of course, that's impossible. Even for an angel.

"Lucifer, I only want you to focus on what _you_ want to focus on."

He sags against the seat, panting, a fresh swath of sweat pearling against his brow. She'd _punished_ him. And he hadn't safe worded. Exactly like Kyle had warned. God, damn it. 

Maybe she should let him wind down on his own, but … this isn't safe. This isn't a safe state for him. Vulnerable. Intensely open to any suggestion she makes, even if it hurts him. And she'd put him there. She'd _pushed_ him there. How does she …?

"Lucifer," she says, a flash of inspiration hitting her, "please, I need you to come back to the state of mind you were in _before_ we played in the club."

"Hmm." His sleepy look sharpens. 

"Please, Lucifer. Please, come back." 

He straightens, loosing a warbling little moan that quickly turns into a growl of frustration. With a sharp-eyed glare, he snaps, "Detective, _must_ you?" 

"Must I _what_?"

He opens his mouth like he's prepared to snarl at her, but instead of snarling, his displeasure settles into a twisting, ugly grimace. "Never mind," he says darkly, the fight bled out of him. "It's bloody well gone anyway."

"You're seriously mad at me for making sure you have your wits?" She fights not to gape at him. "How can you …?" 

"How can I _what_?" he retorts.

Of all the reactions she could have hypothesized, she never thought he'd be pissed. _The crash can suck_ , Kyle had said. He wasn't kidding. Doubts coil and twist. A twanging chord of dissonance fills what's left of her. 

"I'm … sorry," she says.

"What for?"

The conflicting emotions she's fought with over the past few hours threaten to pull her apart. Shame versus arousal. Bafflement and doubt versus certainty. Questions like: who am I? What does this new experience make me?

She looks away. 

Off Hollywood Boulevard, spitting distance from tourist traps clogged with celebrity seekers, lie crowded residential areas. Apartment complexes. Garden style condos. Tiny houses. Narrow streets. A three-story complex—ironically labeled Seaside Heights—rises from a clot of poorly cultivated palm trees. 

"I feel like I took advantage of you," she admits softly, trying to swallow back her nausea. "I was trying _not_ to do that."

A huffy sigh. "If tonight was you taking advantage, please do continue at your leisure," he says, his voice clipped with impatience. "Honestly, I approve. Is that all?"

"Is that … _no._ No, that's not _all_!" She scrubs furiously at her face, swallowing, swallowing, before facing him again. "Look, I was prepared to boss you around a bit to sell a role. I was even prepared for you to get a kick out if it—your fantasy and all, like you said." In the darkened car cabin, his eyes seem black, burning. Not human. He's _not_. His preternaturalness is obvious when he's rankled. "But this was like … everything you've spent the last week panicking about and stressing over—having your will taken from you, being owned, being a _pet_ —and suddenly you're in this weird hypnotic state, and it's all okay." Her body is shaking when she adds, "How the _fuck_ was this okay for you?"

"Detective"—frustration froths in his faux-calm tone—"as I have tried to explain several times, what we did was not the same as _anything_ I was panicking about or stressing over this past week."

"How is it not the same?" she asks him. 

"Because the decision to gift something isn't the same as having it _stolen_ ," he claps back. "Voluntary submission is not—" 

"Well, I didn't think you were gonna end up _stoned_ on it!" she exclaims. "And … and …."

And. 

She doesn't know what follows and. She's out of words. The nape of her neck is sticky with sweat. Her stomach churns like a goddamned butter mixer. Her fingers tremble as she swipes loose bits of hair away from her eyes.

He regards her lividly. And then … an infinitesimal softening occurs around the edges of his face. His lips. 

"Truth be told, Detective, neither did I, or I'd have warned you," he admits. "I've seen it plenty often, but it's not something I've experienced. I didn't think I could." 

So. Just like she'd thought. Subspace is new for him, too. 

Great.

He reaches across the car cabin like he wants to stroke her face, but he stops short of touching her. "I've spent seven straight days vacillating between agony at worst, and insatiability at best," he adds. "Today, I found so much relief I am replete." He winces like he aches. Like he yearns again. "Or … I was. Really, you needn't worry." 

"I still feel like I violated you or something."

"And I swear to you, you did not."

"But—" 

"Det—" He pauses. " _Chloe_ ," he continues with emphasis. "Is something else … wrong?"

"Yes, something is wrong! You lost your damned mind scurrying around at my beck and call tonight, you"—she splays the fingers of both hands like mock explosions—"at my feet like five times—"

"Three," he interjects. "Some of them ran together."

"Whatever! The point is, I _made_ you—all it took was a few words—and I …." Her voice trails away as she finds herself back in the moment. Watching him dissolve on cue to the sound of her voice. _Mine,_ she'd thought. _Mine, and no one else's_. The heart of the issue detonates, realization exploding into the claustrophobic car cabin like a frag grenade. "Lucifer, I liked it. That's why I didn't safe word." Even though she'd felt awkward and out of her depth and— "I liked it."

He frowns.

"Lucifer, I _liked_ it," she repeats. 

"Yes, and?"

"Earlier," she rushes to clarify. Notnow. "Not when I was talking to Malik, or after …." She sucks in a breath. "Just in the club; I swear."

He stares at her, his frown intensifying like she'd presented him with an essay question: explain greed. Or something. But then … enlightenment. He chortles, his delight setting her teeth on edge. 

"What are you _laughing_ about?" she demands.

"Chloe, darling," he says gently, grinning, "you've a control kink bigger than my dad's ego. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

She blinks. "What …?"

"A control kink? You like to be in control? Gives you a delightful down low tingle?"

"But …." Wait. Does it? 

"That's why I told you to pretend we were at work," he continues. "You boss me around all the bloody time at work."

"I … do?" _Does_ she? 

He laughs again. "Is the bloody Pope Catholic?"

She rewinds her life, thinking with sinking realization of all the times she's told him, "Go there!" or, "Do this!" or, " _Behave_!" or ….

Hoooly shit.

"But … but it feels wrong,” she says. “It feels _wrong_ to enjoy controlling and hurting people—controlling and hurting _you—_ and—" She blue screens of death when she remembers the woman in the plexiglass dungeon. The dom who'd been beating her sub's genitals with a riding crop, laughing while she did it. "That's not me. Lucifer, that's not me. How do you see that in _me_?"

"Well, for one, you didn't hurt me."

"But—"

"Chloe, those who participate in pain play _enjoy_ it for whatever reason. Perhaps pain ispleasure for them. Perhaps pain as a precursor enhances the pleasure to follow. Perhaps they enjoy the blissful shower of endorphins their body's natural pain response produces—a biological high."

"Like … subspace."

"Right. Yes. Exactly." He nods at her. "Some are simply wired this way. That's what makes them who they are. Can participating in pain play really be considered an enjoyment of 'hurting' people when it's both consensual and ultimately pleasurable for all parties?"

That's … a decent point. She looks at him. Someone who claims to be both dom and sub. A switch. 

"You've … done stuff like that?" she asks tremulously. For some reason, imagining him as the dom in the plexiglass dungeon helps.

"As I've said, I've no taste for pain pl—"

"No, I …." Her Lucifer. Her Devil. The man whose voice had cracked when he'd sworn young Satan worshippers—whom he'd openly reviled—were still innocent, and he would never hurt them. "I mean, when you're the one with the riding crop."

"I've no compunctions about fulfilling such desires for others, for all the reasons I've stated. Mazikeen quite liked—"

"I _really_ need to learn not to ask," Chloe grumbles.

An almost laughing exhalation gusts from him. His warmth makes her warm, too. "For whatever it's worth in this discussion," he assures her, "you really didn't hurt me, Detective. Not at all."

"But … the catch-22? In the car just now?"

"Cracking good foreplay in that context. Merely"—his lip twitches—"unfulfilled." 

"But you've been telling me all week the compulsion compelling you is one of the most awful, miserable, painful experiences of your very long life."

"It feels quite different when I'm actually in the mood for it, provided it's not protracted."

"Five minutes isn't protracted?"

"Not quite, though I doubt I'd enjoy much beyond that." He takes a breath that fills his chest, and then releases it. "Chloe, you made me feel safe enough to stop."

"Stop what?"

"When my head started to feel"—he pauses, searching for a word—"fuzzy … I thought it peculiar. Not worrisome—you were there, and it felt like the inklings of any good high. So, I didn't safe word, and the feeling kept intensifying. Until I wasn't turning things over anymore. I wasn't _calculating_. I wasn't worried, or trapped, or haunted by nightmares I've no desire to recall. I simply … stopped. And it was …." He trails away, the wistful, longing expression on his face unmistakable.

He wants to go back. To before she'd woken him up.

In subspace, he hadn't been a victim.

And suddenly … she gets it. Gets him. Gets why normal people like to do this. Because it _is_ normal. Stress is a ubiquitous condiment slathered onto every life. Everybody wants ways to hold the mayo now and then. 

Some people go to the spa. Some people read a book. Some people return to nature or exercise or smoke a joint or _whatever_. And some people like being tied up, the stress of decision-making removed. 

Hell, in this context, subspace sounds like bliss. 

She'd given Lucifer bliss. 

_She_ had. 

And the knowledge he'd trusted her enough to do that for him even when he didn't understand what the hell was happening? The realization she wields that kind of power? The intense, tight, warm feeling from before in the club crackles in her core like fireworks. 

_Still foreplay,_ he'd said. _Merely … unfulfilled._

"Oh, it makes sense to me now," she says, awed. 

"Does it." His tone is doubtful.

" _Yeah_ , it _does_."

She reaches to take his hand, telegraphing her intent by stopping before her fingerpads brush skin. He doesn't protest. She mashes his knuckles together, stroking him with her thumb.

"I know I probably can't send you back to subspace without playing again," she says, realizing the extreme—though inadvertent—amount of work that had gone into what she'd achieved, "but … I could praise you? If you want me to fulfill the unfulfilled bits for you."

He peers at her like she just hung the moon. "Please."

"Can we check out this house, first, since we're here?"

"Detective"—he grins—"if you desire to extend our game beyond the boundaries of the club, I am, of course, amenable."

"Well, I didn't mean like _that_ ," she says, blushing. 

But he only laughs and waves dismissively to the road. "To what house are you referring? I'm afraid I wasn't paying attention before. Have we a lead?"

"Yeah. Got an address, name, and description for our suspect. The house is in Hollywood Hills."

"Excellent, Detective," he purrs. "Drive on, if you like."

The way he says it sounds so fucking porny. Like he's been hired to co-star with her in _Detective Double D and the Case of the Custom Cock Cage_. Her blush heats to boiling. Still, Chloe tries to banter back, "I think we've established I always like driving?"

"Then I suppose it's quite lucky I enjoy being driven by you," he replies with a smirk.

She rolls her eyes before switching back to seriousness. "You're really okay now?"

He pulls the blanket more tightly around himself. "Snug as a bug in a rug, I assure you."

Smiling, she pulls back into traffic.

* * *

The house in Hollywood Hills isn't large, not compared to some of the palatial monstrosities Chloe has seen in this neighborhood. But it's not small, either. Its short cobblestone driveway and tiny lawn—all doused in security floodlights—look out of place compared to the hulking postmodern glass construction taking up most of the lot. The distant sound of running water potentially confirms Malik's recollection of a koi pond closer to the door. Beyond that, everything is quiet, still. Not unexpected at 11:30 p.m. 

"Shall we knock, then?" Lucifer asks, frowning.

"I don't think anyone's home," she says, nodding at the gaping garage door. No cars or clutter inside. Nothing. "It's too late to be doing a knock-and-talk anyway. I just wanted a look."

"Ah."

She calls dispatch. A tired-sounding operator picks up. 

"Yeah, this is Unit Eight-Three-One," Chloe says into the mic. "Can I get a uni on this address, please? Hourly checks. I wanna know the second there's a car in the driveway. Over."

The dispatcher confirms the details while Chloe fixates on the house, memorizing every line and angle. If no one shows before Monday morning, she'll be back regardless, armed and ready to snoop.

* * *

Chloe arrives home with Lucifer well after midnight. Since leaving Hollywood Hills, Chloe has been asking Lucifer for things. _Open the door for me_ , she's said, both leaving the car and walking into the apartment. _Get me a glass of water. Go clean up—change into something fresh._

Little zaps of compulsion. 

Foreplay. 

As the shower faucet squeaks open, starting a deluge into the tub somewhere above her, she turns off the lights downstairs, deposits her dirty drinking glass in the kitchen sink, and heads to bed. She stops in the hallway, next to the bathroom. As she's instructed him—both for Trixie's sake and her own sensibilities—the door is closed. Hopefully locked, though she won't test it, just in case jiggling a doorknob has the same effect on him knocking does. A strip of light fills the gap at the threshold. Beyond, water thunders in a syncopated, haphazard rhythm—the product of a large body spinning slowly under the spray. 

His large body.

She tries to shove that devilish picture away as she calls, "Lucifer?"

Haphazard drumbeats morph into a rushing shhh as he stills. "Yes, Detective?" 

A smile tugs at her lips. "I just want you to know … you've been really—" A lump forms in her throat when she thinks of him. Her morning star. "Look, thanks for a perfect afternoon on the Pier, and for dealing with my questions, and my little fits and starts of self discovery. I know I'm a bit"—okay, a lot—"vanilla."

"Nothing wrong with vanilla," he replies easily. "It's a great compliment for louder flavors."

Her smile widens. 

"Do you find yourself fancying a spot of rocky road now as well?" he asks, a sharp edge of doubt in his tone.

She leans against the door, closing her eyes. "Rocky road is perfect," she says, tracing random patterns into the paint. " _You're_ perfect. And I love you." 

A sharp slosh of water follows, but whatever audible reaction he may have, she can't hear. 

"Goodnight, Lucifer," she adds softly, and then she leaves him be.

* * *

She's still wired, still trying to wind down for the night, when he darkens her doorway. His hair is slicked to his scalp. After his shower, he'd donned a silk robe—cinched at the waist—and boxers that hang to mid-thigh.

"Is the invitation to join you still open?" he asks. He clears his throat. "Not for a shag, I know."

Her gaze flicks to Dan's old side of the bed. The blankets are creased and untouched. "Sure," she says. "Always." She pulls a pillow from her stack and flops it onto the comforter for him. 

He doesn't take off his robe as he eases under the covers with her. His toes poke over the edge of the mattress, evidenced by the moving swells of blankets.

"This … won't be too frustrating?" she feels compelled to ask.

"Not tonight." He smiles—shyly?—at her. "And you make me feel …." He doesn't elaborate as he rolls onto his side, facing her and the lamp. 

She reaches for the switch. 

"The light won't bother me," he rushes to say as he closes his eyes. "Kind of my whole bloody job description. Or, well, it used to be."

Her mouth falls open at his little dose of You'd Never Believe This Is Reality for $1000, Alex. 

"Do try not to have another randy dream about me, though, will you?" Lucifer tells her while she's still trying to pick up her jaw. "I rather enjoy not being wound up, for once."

And then in the space of, like, four breaths, he relaxes into a doze. 

She rolls her eyes. 

Of course. 

Of course, Rocky Road would be one of _those_ assholes. People who can shuffle off to Nod as soon as their head hits a pillow. Meanwhile, her vanilla self is stuck staring at the ceiling all night, pondering the complexities of life that never seem to occur to her when she's vertical.

Still ….

"I'll take 'Satan Sleeps without Counting Sheep' for $600, Alex," she murmurs.

"Mmm?" 

"Nothing," she whispers. "Sweet dreams, if you want."

"Mmm."

Her smile threatens to break her face as she flips to the next page in her book. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Alex Trebek :(


	27. "Praise Satan"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everybody who takes the time to leave feedback :)

The breeze makes the pull cord hanging from the window blinds twist and sway, tapping with no particular rhythm against the frame. Passing seagulls chatter on salty gusts of ocean air. A car swishes by on the street. But the sound she most enjoys listening to, in that fuzzy, liminal space between sleep and waking, is his breathing. Rasping, soft, even. 

During the night, they'd made a tangle of limbs and parts. Her ear rests against a hard plane of silk and skin. Her feet brush the swell of his calf, where the curly little hairs dusting his leg tickle her toes. His hand might be the warm thing cupping her arm—his shoulder potentially her not-soft pillow—though she can't see from this vantage point and doesn't want to move.

Time passes. She lets it, resting with her eyes closed. Until he takes a deep breath. Her "pillow" shifts. 

"Morning," she murmurs.

He agrees with a soft, "Indeed," that rumbles through his sternum.

She rolls onto her side to peer at him. The gray light turns his sleepy gaze dark—black—but not cold. Smiling, she strokes the kinked curl hanging over his forehead. "You have bedhead." 

He smiles back at her. "So do you."

He inches closer, pressing his face to hers, their noses bumping. He reaches across the bed, underneath the sheets. Their fingers interlock, their palms a push and pull of unevenly applied force making the blankets move. 

"Did you sleep well?" she asks.

"Yes, for once. You?"

"Yeah." Her smile stretches wider, aching. "I did."

The tip of his tongue peeks through his lips as he wets them. Her pulse quickens. 

"This was really …." Perfect, comes to mind, but she can't say that without hijacking his body mid-conversation. "If you want, I'd … like to do it more often?"

"Sleep together?"

"Yeah. But not … _sleep_ together."

"What about this, then?" he murmurs, tipping his chin, pressing his mouth to hers. 

A soft gasp of surprise catches in her throat. He kisses her upper and lower lip in soft, searching succession. His tongue darts along the line between them. Frissons of arousal spark to the ends of her nerves. And then … she kisses him back. 

The world falls away. 

His ribs compress, a guttural noise rumbling from his chest. She wants this. Wants _him._ They've spent too long apart. 

She shifts onto all fours, straddling him between her knees. The blankets slide down the slope of her spine, spilling behind her. They toil and tease—morning breath and bedhead and general dishevelment … none of it matters. What matters is she loves him, and he loves her.

She curls her tongue into his mouth. He's a good kisser. A _fabulous_ kisser. Her lower body tightens with need as he rakes his fingers down her spine. She grabs his hair. His intensity deepens with every touch, every taste. 

He hugs her to his chest. His erection, trapped by his boxers, bumps into the crease of her—

"Fuck!" she blurts, flinching away. He's panting, his pupils dilated with arousal, his face a debauched, blushing mess. " _Fuck_."

A lascivious grin creases the skin around his eyes. He licks his lips like he's still tasting her. "Isn't that the bloody idea?"

"No, I said _no_ sex!"

The air rushes out of him, his smile vanishing. His body doesn't seem to relax, at first, like he doesn't _want_ to stop. "Detective," he says, reaching for—

" _No_!" she snaps, scrambling backward. "No, don't touch me. You _can't_."

He settles against the blankets as though dragged. "Forcing me to preserve my consent. Bloody brilliant."

"I didn't mean …." _Fuck_. The kiss replays like a Technicolor nightmare in her head. He made the first move. It was his idea to start, at least. God, she hopes. But, "How much of that was the compulsion spurring you on?"

"I kissed you because I desired to." 

"But the rest?"

"Is it so hard to believe my desires can intersect with the compulsion's?" he asks, his gaze pleading. "I've my safe word. I could have said it."

"No." She backs up a step. "No, no, that line is just … it's too fuzzy." 

"So now I can't bloody kiss you either," he says darkly.

"No." God, she feels sick. "Not like that." 

"You let me kiss you before."

"Little pecks where you chose to kiss _me_ ," she counters. "Not face-sucking I inevitably end up reciprocating into: pleasure me _now_ , slave."

Sweat glistens on his skin. Blush carpets his cheeks, neck, and chest. His nipples are tight, aroused nubs, and the bulge in his boxers is impossible to ignore. He's only just now catching his breath. 

She really could have forced him.

She really could have raped him.

She _did_ assault him.

All from a few moments of forgotten context.

Revulsion churns. "I need to get—" She halts, realizing she was about to do it again. Force him. "I'm thinking I'll get some air."

"Perhaps," he says with a grouchy edge, "that would be best." 

He probably needs a chance cool off, too. Literally. Figuratively. Maybe take a cold shower. 

"I'm … I'm really sorry," she stammers. "Lucifer, I'm sorry."

Snatching her phone off the nightstand, she flees before he can reply.

* * *

She grabs her rain slicker from the closet to conceal her messy morning sex hair and pajamas. The day is young, and well outside tourist season. Nobody will see her bedraggled, scary self, and she doesn't care so much about what she looks like anyway; she just needs to get away. Away from her suddenly claustrophobic apartment. Away from him. Away from the possibility of anything she says or does having disastrous effects. Grabbing her keys and slipping into some old flip-flops, she escapes, darting into the ocean-foggy gloom.

She lives too far from the water for Lucifer's radius to stretch—but there's a park three blocks from her apartment, and she closes the distance quickly. 

At the basketball courts, two guys play one-on-one, their sneakers squeaking and scuffing as they shift and dodge and sprint. She passes the courts, plodding across the wet grass toward the playground. At the end of her trajectory, she slumps into a swing—Trixie's favorite, third from the left. She stares emptily at her feet, drawing abstract shapes in the sand. 

Her stomach hurts. 

Guilt is a scalding fist, punched through her ribcage, even as she aches in needy ways, her body having somehow missed the memo that arousal isn't appropriate right now.

This compulsion isn't just his. It's hers. They're _both_ cursed. They're _both_ bound. And how completely fucked up is it she has everything she ever wanted from Lucifer—love, trust, _reliability—_ yet she has nothing she wants whatsoever. 

Frustration makes her want to scream, but she can't.

Not here. Not in public. Maybe she should have gone for a drive in her private meltdown box. Of course, that would have trapped Lucifer unless she'd only lapped the block forever. His prison is hers.

Her fingers tighten against the swing's chains. 

_Lucifer, I_ hate _this_ , she thinks. 

Nothing answers but traffic, wind, and distant sounds of sneakers squeaking.

* * *

She loses track of time, watching the basketball game, thinking. As the morning advances, the playground fills with kids, and she moves to a bench, away from their rambunctious energy. The ocean fog burns off, letting sunlight poke through in uneven patches. She phones dispatch, hoping either her BOLO for Constantine or her request for unis to watch the Hollywood Hills house have borne some fruit. No such luck. Work will not be her savior today. 

Dan calls. "I can't make my flight tomorrow," he says without preamble. He sounds … stressed. "Something important came up. Can you keep Trixie an extra night?"

"Sure," she replies, "is everything okay?"

There's a familiar, insistent mumble in the background. Something ending in "have to be sure." 

"I know; I _know_ ," Dan almost hisses, not to Chloe. "Jesus Christ, will you let me talk?" 

The mumbler says, "But blah blah hypothesis mumble mumble blah." 

"Dan?" Chloe asks. "Dan, hello?" Riotous noise blasts the line, like people are fighting for possession of the phone. She makes a face at the screen, pulling it away from her ear. "Uh … Dan?" 

The jostling ceases. "Look, we can talk when I get back," he says.

"Gee, thanks for your permission, oh, father of my child," Chloe replies wryly.

"Chlo, I didn't mean it like that. I just meant—"

"I know; I'm teasing. But … everything's okay? Mamita's okay?" 

"Um? Oh." Like Mamita is an afterthought. "Yeah, she's fine. Everybody's great over here. I'm—shut. _up,"_ he says, his voice morphing abruptly into a sibilant hiss as he turns away. "She'll hear you, and you're _craz—_ "

"Mumble mumble _crazy_ ; will you just _listen?"_ adds the familiar mumbler.

"… Ella?" Chloe says. "Is that you?"

"No!" bleats Ella. "Nope. I mean … oh, look! A penguin!" 

"A _what_?"

"Listen, I'll see you Monday, o _kay_?" Dan enunciates into the receiver. "We'll talk then."

"O … kay?" Chloe says, frowning. "Say hi to Ella for me?"

"Yep."

And then he hangs up.

She calls back, but Dan doesn't answer. She tries texting, but he won't reply. She tries Ella, too. Nothing. Lastly, Chloe calls Miami PD and asks for a wellness check on Mamita's house. Just in case. 

What else can she do? 

Ella is there, so … Dan's not alone, at least. Chloe will worry if he's a no-show on Monday, or doesn't call to explain why he's not showing. Until then, she's willing to relegate her concerns to a niggling _what the legitimate fuck?_

But seriously.

What the legitimate _fuck_?

* * *

She's playing some stupid crossword puzzle game, trying not to tease her brain too much with wondering about Dan, when her phone rings. Not Dan. Not Ella. Not a blocked number, like for work. Just a number she doesn't recognize offhand. Sighing, she picks up, expecting the latest robocall about expired student loans.

"Ms. Decker?" asks a baritone voice.

She frowns. "Yeah?"

"Hello, this is Jesse Gonzalez." Her landlord. "How are you this morning?" 

"I'm fine. What's up?"

"Ms. Decker, I've received noise complaints concerning your unit. Something about screaming?"

"What?" She stands. " _Screaming_?"

"Two separate neighbors called."

"But I'm not even—"

"Look, I don't want to call the police. Just, please, will you keep it down?"

"Sure," she says, checking the time. 11:47 a.m. She'd been gone about four hours, moping, while Lucifer had been … what, exactly? "Sorry. I'm actually at the park, but I'm headed back now."

A pause. " _Should_ I call the police?" asks Mr. Gonzalez. 

She steps away from the bench, starting to jog. "No, it's probably my roommate." But why the hell would Lucifer be _screaming_? Dread coils. "I'll call you back if there's an issue."

Hanging up, she dumps her phone into her coat pocket. The soles of her flip-flops clap against the broken pavement. She hadn't even considered how leaving Lucifer behind might affect him. She'd just left. But … surely he could fly to her if need be? She purposefully hadn't locked the door, and she wasn't far. 

Maybe Devil shenanigans?

But he hasn't been all that shenanigan-y since he'd returned. Since before he'd left _,_ really.

She shifts into a sprint.

* * *

Whoever or whatever was making enough noise to warrant complaints is silent—or at least not audible through walls—as she approaches her unit. She swipes back her hood and reaches for the door. It swings open all of an inch before it smacks into something solid, then ricochets closed again. There's a thump. Like a falling body. 

"Oops!" She backs off the welcome mat. "Sorry, were you coming out?"

But the door doesn't open to reveal him grinning sheepishly at her. She doesn't hear any shuffling either. The silence stretches.

"Lucifer?" she calls. "Lucifer, you okay?"

Nothing.

What if the thing blocking the door _isn't_ Lucifer?

Her mind flashes to her gun, locked in her safe. 

But she stomps that thought quickly. Occam's razor. She left Lucifer in her apartment. Lucifer is who she's likely to find. 

She tries the latch again, this time more cautious about pushing on it. The choppy sound of half-rasping half-moaning becomes audible. Four inches of clearance exist between the edge of the door and the frame. Not enough space to slip through. 

"Lucif—"

The thing beyond the threshold moves, a squeak of skin against hardwood floor. She pushes the door open another couple of inches and squirms through, bumping it shut again with her hip. 

Her heart bungees into her throat. "Oh, my God."

His robe is torn, hanging off one shoulder, the waist sash dragging like a loose piece of spaghetti. He's crouched on his knees, his hips thrusting at nothing as he stares into space. Sweat plasters his hair to his head and glistens on his blush-smeared skin. A stressed, snarling grimace paints his face. His breaths are ragged, exhausted, sobbing gasps.

"What," she says, the word like a vestigial limb—useless in present context. 

His tear-stained eyes track to her. He can't seem to hold his hips still, even as he sinks into child's pose at her feet. "Please," he begs her, a bare, toneless croak wrought by vocal cords already stripped raw. His nails dig into the floor, scraping pale marks into the wood. " _Please._ "

He's not sick. He's not hurt. He's not perpetrating "Devilish shenanigans." He's catch-22ed. When had—

" _Please_ ," he sobs, more a cough than a cry. Her insides clench with stress as he stares at her—through her—his expression gutted of sapience. Blood trickles down his chin from where he shredded his own lip. He's slavering. His ribs compress, and he moans like he's in purgatory. In torment. The sound is deep and harrowing and it makes her gut twist. " _Please."_

"Do you want me to cancel this or praise you?" she asks. 

" _Please_."

She doesn't know what a sane Lucifer would prefer, denial or force. In this context, two horrendous options. 

"Lucifer, what should I _do_?"

But all he can say is, " _Please_." And again. And again. Blood-tinged spittle spirals from his lips to the floor in a long, glistening trail. The tendons in his neck bulge. His quadriceps cord. " _Please_." And then he starts to hump the floor at her feet. His toes flex, digging against the hardwood planks. The strangled, suffering, harrowed mixture of wail and sob that falls from his lips with each thrust roils her stomach.

She can't cancel this. She can't. That would be cruel and unusual. He would only suffer _more._

"Lucifer, you're so good," she says, staring into space because she can't bear to look at him. "You're such a good … good Devil. You're perfect."

His back arches. His head sinks to the ground. His fists clench, the pads of his fingers screeching against the floor as he rakes his arms back. He cries out, sputtering like he's choking, like something stabbed him in the lung, and he's dying. Like this orgasm is anything but pleasant. And then his lower body jerks. And jerks again. And again. 

His body still spasming, his chin smacks the floor with a crack that clacks his teeth together, and he sprawls onto his stomach. The spasms subside. His exhausted, sucking breaths move his whole torso, but his arms and legs seem like functionless, dead weights. He stares emptily across the floor, still drooling.

"Lucifer, I'm so sorry," she whispers, giving him a wide bubble of space, despite her immediate urge to comfort him. "Lucifer, I'm _so_ sorry. I don't know how this happened."

Instead of answering—explaining—he slips into torpor. 

Like his body gave out on him. 

Of _course_ it gave out on him. He's been tortured. For as many as four hours. With sensations that typically have him moaning in a matter of seconds, twisting in discomfort in minutes, nonsensically screaming in less than an hour.

Screaming. Caterwauling, like before. 

The noise complaints.

Until he'd screamed himself hoarse. 

Nausea coils in her stomach.

Had he tried to escape her apartment—come to her for help? Had she sabotaged his ability to interact with objects again, somehow? He'd scratched runnels into the floorboards, but the curse can't control him as well when he's mindless, so …. 

As she grabs a thermal blanket from the linen closet—a pillow from her bed—she reviews what'd happened. Again, again, again. More Technicolor nightmares. But no matter what angle she looks from, she can't autopsy the situation. She only knows he'd seemed fine—if irritated and sexually frustrated can count as "fine"—when she'd left. And the rest?

A mystery.

* * *

She sits on the couch in the living room, trying and failing and trying and failing to distract herself with more phone games. He sleeps for over an hour before he stirs, lurching to his feet. The blanket she'd draped over him slides to the floor. He doesn't look at her, doesn't speak—what little she sees of his face is flaming scarlet but not Devilish—before he climbs the stairs. 

_Wait_ , she wants to tell him. But she couldn't bear forcing him right now. Not accidentally, not by well-meaning purpose. So, she says nothing.

After the graceless thump, thump, thump of him ascending the steps, no sounds follow for several minutes. A fresh war wages in her mind. He shouldn't have to ask for the restoration of his ability to touch—assuming it needs restoring; that's still only a hypothesis. But he shouldn't have to ask for space either.

After a moment of back and forth—asking herself whether she should chase after him or leave him to his privacy—she splits the difference, reading off the touch command from her iPad notes to an empty living room. She can only hope he's not choosing to close his preternatural ears.

* * *

Stress and exhaustion eventually claim her, forcing her to narrow the gap between them, no matter how much space she wishes she could offer. Her body is tired. Achy. She wants to curl under her blankets—maybe they still smell like him—and drift. She won't go near his room. 

But—

She halts at the top of the steps, frowning.

His bedroom door is open.

The bathroom door is open, too.

The two places he's most likely to be, and neither one is barred from her. Which … doesn't seem consistent with a man who wants some space. Unless he didn't hear her restoring his ability to touch, and he's been hiding up here, still shackled by the compulsion, too mortified to ask for help. 

A wet, upset sniff comes from the bathroom.

"Lucifer?" she calls softly, her body frozen by the stair railing. "You okay? Need anything?"

Silence.

Her stomach swoops as memories of searching Mr. Blackthorn's apartment flit at the edges of her mind's eye. "You can talk, right? I didn't"—her eyes prickle—"I didn't cancel that again, somehow, did I?"

A pause. Her heart climbs into her throat. Oh, God, she really fucked this— 

"I can speak," he rasps, his voice croaky like a honking goose.

"Okay," she replies. "Okay, good. I'm sorry; I'll leave you alo—"

"Who are you?"

"What." That useless word again. 

"Who …?"

She darts across the hallway.

He's standing in front of the vanity, naked save for his boxers, which bear a dark, asymmetrical stain on the front—a blacker than black patch. He stares into the mirror without expression. His robe lies in a puddle by his feet—his toes scrunched against the purple bathmat. Even now, several hours later, his face is still blotched red with irritation from crying. From _sobbing_. And for the first time, she glimpses his front. 

Scratches score his flesh. Deep, bleeding wounds in sets of five. Down his pectorals. Across his abdomen. His quadriceps. Like he was so desperate he tried to claw off his skin. Like … the marks he'd had all over him when he'd arrived a week ago. Exactly. Like them.

Not whip marks, then. Not like she'd thought.

"Oh, _Lucifer_ ," she murmurs, horrified. 

"That's … not me."

She follows his empty gaze to his reflection in the mirror. "What's not you?"

"He's not me. He's not …."

He blinks. And then he's crying. Leaking—not blubbering—as he starts to shake. "I've … no idea how I got here," he says, distant. "I've …." He looks away from the mirror. "Do you know?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" she asks.

His hands tremble when he touches his face, tracing the ridges of his cheeks. His brow. "This isn't real." His removed tone matches his desolated expression.

"I'm gonna call Linda."

He grabs her camisole, striking like a mantis. "No."

"It's okay, if you want," she babbles, patting his wrist. "I'm gonna call Linda. She'll know—"

His grip tightens. The opposite spaghetti strap tugs painfully at her neck, scraping against her skin. 

"Where am I?" he asks.

She's convinced she's watching dissociative amnesia forming in real time. Trauma, predicated by loss of control. By pain. By having his whole sense of self stripped from him, replaced by a single amplified emotion: desire. 

"You're in my apartment." She points at herself, stepping closer, if only to convince him to let go. "Chloe, remember?"

He cocks his head and scoffs, "I know who you are, Detective."

"I should call Lin—"

" _No_."

He releases her shirt, shifting back to the sink. His expression isn't thousand-yard anymore as he regards his haggard appearance. The tears. The scrapes and scratches. His soiled boxers. 

"Dearie me"—he picks at the stain—"have _I_ had a randy dream this time?" 

"No."

"How unfortunate," he jokes, reaching for his comb.

"Lucifer."

He turns, presenting his shoulder blade to her as he swipes at his hair, tangles warring with comb teeth. 

" _Lucifer_."

He sighs huffily. "What, Detective."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"You were reading a book when I drifted off."

"You don't remember any of today?" she asks.

"I've only just woken up."

"At 3 p.m.?"

"What am I to say?" He smirks. "You seem to have sated me, if my underpants are any indication." 

"If you just woke up, how are we in the bathroom?"

"Well, _obviously_ , I walked," he counters, sounding suddenly miffed. "I'm more curious about you."

That he can sweep away so many incongruities boggles the mind. Her guilt is almost strangulating. The trust he gave her last night, she'd ruined. She really hurt him. Not just physically. On a broad, spiritual level. Somehow. 

"I'm so sorry," she says softly.

"For being in the bathroom with me?"

"For this morning."

"You didn't wake me, darling. Everything is fine." 

Everything is _not_ fine. And she's probably not going to get answers. She'll never know how she fucked things up. Which means there's a chance she'll hurt him _again_. So badly, his brain will scramble like eggs for a trauma omelette.

"No," she says.

The comb catching, he fights with a nasty knot. "No, what?"

"This can't happen again."

His brow furrows. "What are you on about?" 

God, if only there were some way to give him more control. Some kind of agency, independent of her and her too human levels of vigilance. Because this _can't_ happen again. She refuses. This—

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Inspiration strikes. Something they haven't tried yet. "Lucifer, do you think recordings of me could still trigger the compulsion?

"Pardon?" he says, setting down his comb. He shuffles across the bathroom to turn on the tub faucet. Water gushes into the basin.

"I could make some recordings for you," she says, trying not to bounce with excitement. "On my iPad. Every command I've ever given you. And then, you can have it. It can be yours. Unless I somehow screw up both your ability to speak _and_ touch, you'll have access. Like, 'Hey, Siri, tell me to never mind, so I can escape this bloody catch-22.' I mean, right?" 

"It's … an interesting theory." He looks at his boxers again. "Your dream self seems to have been effective."

"You didn't have a dream, Lucifer."

"Regardless, it's an interesting thought." 

"Wanna try it?"

"Yes." No hesitation. 

"I'll be right back," she says. "Don't listen to me while I'm gone, okay? I'm gonna make some recordings of commands."

He grins. "An opportune time for a shower, I suppose."

"Yeah," she says, nodding. "Yeah, do that, if you want." 

She dashes out as he fumbles with the waistband of his boxers. 

* * *

When she returns with her iPad, he says, "Finished, are you?" The words are muffled through the door.

"Yeah. Can I come in?" 

"Of course, but—"

Steam billows against her as she barrels over the threshold. He's toweling off, his skin an irritated, lobster red. All of it. From his neck to his very bare, very perfect ass. The network of scrapes and cuts marring his body seems fainter now. Healing, a little. "Sorry, I thought you'd be … um." She averts her gaze.

Rolling his eyes, he makes a show of wrapping the fluffy towel around his waist. "Well, I did try to warn you."

"You really have no compunctions about being naked, do you?"

"Defaulting to shame over one's body is a human sitch, courtesy of Dad. Definitely not my jam. Devil, after all." 

"I can't imagine that."

"That I'm the Devil?"

"Having no self-consciousness. It's just"—she shrugs—"a foreign concept." She proffers her iPad. "Anyway, here."

Their fingers brush as he takes the device, pressing the home key to open to the main page. 

"In audio recordings," she tells him, and he navigates there.

A long list of titles fills the screen. From "freedom-ish of speech" to "sleep" to "interact" and others. All the commands she's given him over the past week, including several variations on "oops," that will hopefully help him cancel anything he wants. 

He laughs with a hint of bitterness, reading. "All work and no play. Why am I not surprised."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"I _mean_ , darling," he replies, "you're a repressed workaholic the likes of which I've not seen since Queen Victoria." 

Chloe folds her arms. "So?"

He tilts the iPad toward her, showing her the screen. "So, no praise for your pet Devil?" 

"You're not my _pet_!"

His expression softens. "No. Apologies."

"No. No, I … sorry." He's the oppressed party here. He can call this mess whatever the fuck he wants, if it helps him cope in better ways than a brain scramble. "Why do you want me to record myself praising you?"

"Is your memory impacted as well?" he snarks. "You literally own my pleasure."

"Well, yeah, but …?"

He peers at her intently, like he's imploring her to connect the dots herself, so he doesn't have to explain it. Maybe another kink? 

She thinks of when they'd realized her praise made him orgasm. He'd been bewildered. _While I'd considered I might require your permission to get my bloody rocks off, I had_ not _expected being told_ I'm a good boy _to bloody well do it_ for _me,_ he'd said. 

She hadn't considered the implications at the time, only the immediate concern. 

_Darling, really, why not have a go with your vibrator if it's still bothering you? At least, you've the option, unlike some of us._

Said implications do a loop-the-loop in her head, impossible now to ignore. 

"You mean, you can't …?" She gestures uselessly at him. "You can't …?"

"No."

"At _all_?"

"Makes a slave more malleable, I suppose," he replies without humor.

More Stockholm Syndrome bullshit. She feels sick. Too sick to be embarrassed when she grits out, "Lucifer, I want you to be able to achieve orgasm when you masturbate." 

His grimace becomes a snarl. He jabs his thumb against one of the recordings. An echo of her voice bounces around in the tiled acoustics, saying soothingly, "I changed my mind; I don't want what I just said."

He sags against the sink, the top of his towel pressing into the beveled edge of the counter. "Well," he says, relaxing. "I suppose that's a successful test."

"But why did my command not work?" 

"I believe it's like trying to take away my ability to experience pain," he says. "I doubt you can stifle the compulsion's primary motivators."

This is _so_ fucking fucked up.

"I can make another recording. Me praising you. That's … I can do that. So, you can have that. I _want_ you to have that—"

His tired gaze shifts to her. 

"—if you want."

The silence stretches, to the point she wonders if he even heard her. Until she notices his hands. Clenched and shaking by his hips like he's fighting not to claw at himself again. 

"I would greatly appreciate the ability to assuage myself, Detective. I have been"—he shudders—" _ravaged_ by this."

His choice of word—ravaged—fertilizes the guilt germinating inside until it blooms. 

But then … something worse occurs to her. 

Something deep and dark and devastating.

 _I know you're pretty when you beg, and when you bawl, and when you bleed,_ Bakasura had said.

She tries not to think of Lucifer at Lilith's feet, begging and bawling and bleeding. But trying not to imagine only makes the imagining more lurid. Lilith could have done it on purpose. Trapped him in a catch-22 spiral. 

Nausea turns her palms clammy. But … no. No, no, no. She can't afford an empathy implosion now. Not when she can help him in the aftermath. 

"Should I make the recording now? Here?" she asks. "Or would you rather I do it in the living room, so you have some privacy?"

He doesn't speak.

"Or … did you have something else in mind?" 

He sets the iPad on the countertop before pausing in front of her like … he's asking permission. Or, maybe, he expects rebuke for wanting contact. A reasonable conclusion after this morning's mess, but the very idea makes her hurt. 

"What would you like?" she says. 

"Will you hold me while you do it?" he asks. 

She doesn't hesitate, closing the gap between them in a stride. She pushes her arms under his, wrapping around his waist. He encircles her, mirroring her motion. His body is warm. She presses her ear to his bare chest, listening to the soothing rush of his breathing as she rubs his back in slow circles.

"How's this?" she says.

"Better." He rests his chin against the top of her head. "Now, do it," he tells her. "I'm ready."

Her eyes hurt. Her throat constricts. She reaches for the iPad and navigates to the record button, still rubbing his spine with her other hand. 

As soon as she says in a soothing voice, "Lucifer, you're so good," his whole body shudders. "You're such a good Devil." The word Devil sends him over the cliff. His towel-clad groin kicks into motion, thrusting against her belly. "You did such a good job." 

Nothing about this orgasm compares to the previous one, which had seemed more like a perfunctory knife in the gut of his suffering than a culmination of pleasure. 

"Praise Satan," she continues, hugging him. "That guy is the best." 

He laughs, a brief, beautiful smile gracing his face before she ends the recording. His body hitches one final time, his navel twitching as his abs ripple. His spent, sated sigh salves her soul as he sags against her. She pulls her fingers through his hair.

"I want you to have this iPad," she tells him. What happened this morning will _never_ happen again. Ever. Not while she's in charge. "It's yours, okay?"

"Mmm, yes," he says. 

"I love you," she replies. 

The words seem to make him cling. 

He clings for a long while. 


	28. "not exactly Jell-O shots"

"—acting like he didn't know where he was or whose body he was in or _anything_ ," Chloe almost hisses into her cellphone, her hand cupped over her mouth.

"I'm sure that must have been very disconcerting," Linda replies on the other end of the line.

"Linda, it was _terrifying_."

"From what you've described, he may have been experiencing depersonalization and derealization. Depersonalization kind of … disconnects the mind from the body. Like you're watching yourself from somewhere else in the room. Derealization makes your surroundings feel unreal to you, like you must be dreaming. Both are common anxiety responses, and _very_ common to people with dissociative disorders like Lucifer's."

_He's not me,_ he'd said. _This isn't real_. 

Chloe closes her eyes. They ache. Everything aches, even her ears, at this point. 

Her bluetooth speaker on the nightstand blares one of her favorite playlists, full of pop Lucifer loathes—Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, Britney. The easiest way to make him tune out without ordering him. 

Once she'd started the music, she'd sat in the corner of her bedroom, hugged by two cold walls. The speaker, the bed, and the closed door form a loose barrier between her and the hallway. Between her and him. 

"So, what can I do?" she asks.

"Anxiety exacerbates these behaviors," Linda explains, "so anything you'd normally do to reduce stress is likely to help. Maybe make him some hot tea. Go for a walk. Listen to _soft_ music." 

Chloe winces as the speaker pumps out a heavy bass beat. "I know it's loud; he's being really weird, and I didn't want him to hear me talking to you."

"Weird, how?"

"Just hearing your name makes him twitchy."

"Probably because I represent confrontations he doesn't want to have, not just between me and him, but between him and his feelings."

"Oh." That doesn't make Chloe feel better. At all.

"Look, my best advice, like before," Linda continues calmly, "is to just be there. Spend time with him. Make sure he knows he's not alone. Keep his stress levels _low_."

"But"—Chloe swallows, her throat feeling like she swallowed a razor—"what if I'm the reason he's stressed?"

"Are you?" asks Linda.

Just as Justin Timberlake dives into the lyrics of _Bye Bye Bye,_ like he's offering a fucking pop confessional. _I loved you endlessly_ , he sings, _when you weren't there for me_. 

Chloe pulls her hand from her mouth, clapping it over her eyes instead, her body sliding down the wall a fraction. "I … did something that really hurt him. And I didn't realize it until later. Which hurt him more. And then he was like … like _that_. Just scrambled—I can't even apologize to him, because he's so disarranged he just shrugs it off." She can't breathe. She can't _breathe_. "And, now, I feel like I'm lying to him, because—"

"Chloe," Linda rushes to say. "Chloe, Chloe, Chloe."

"Sorry," Chloe warbles as her skull bumps into the moulding, and she finishes her slow slide to the floor. "Sorry, I'm …."

"It sounds like you might have some anxiety of your own," Linda soothes.

"I feel like it's all my fault."

"Did you hurt him on purpose?"

"Of course not!" Chloe watches the ceiling fan take unhurried revolutions, trying not to draw comparisons between that and the cement mixer churning in her stomach. "But that doesn't make it okay."

"I'm not saying it does," Linda replies gently. _Bye, bye, bye,_ chants Justin, too loud. "Chloe, why do you feel you're lying to him?"

"Because he's blanking stuff out—if he had full context …."

"You think he'd blame you?"

" _Yes_ "—Chloe scrubs at her face, sniffling—"yeah."

"Why?" Linda asks.

"Why not? I didit."

"Hurt him."

Chloe nods before remembering Linda can't see her. "Yeah. I hurt him. Badly."

"But you said you didn't know until later."

"I didn't."

"So an accident," Linda recounts, "with side effects not immediately observable to you."

"I guess." 

"Does that really sound like something Lucifer would blame you for?" 

_It was you. It always has been._

_I chose long before_ any _of this._

Chloe remembers his baffled expression as she'd accused him of trying to manipulate her. His look of betrayal when she'd stopped him from swallowing the poison he'd pulled from her purse. His hurt when she'd admitted she didn't know if she could learn to accept him. Yet they'd survived. She sits up. What had been a heavy, crushing vise loosens. "I guess I never really thought about that before."

"About what?"

"He has, like, every reason to be hateful of humanity, of … of _me_ , given what I did with Father Kinley." She'd been so determined in the aftermath to prove his trust wasn't misplaced, she'd never conceptualized what it meant that he still trusted her at _all_. "Really, with people who've wronged him personally, he's the most forgiving person I've ever met." She smiles sadly. "He wouldn't know a grudge if it bit him." Except with God. Which probably speaks volumes about what God had done, and not so much about Lucifer.

"So, maybe, work under that assumption instead?" Linda asks. The song switches to something a little less beat driven, though Chloe doesn't immediately recognize it. "That, even in his right mind, he wouldn't blame you for whatever happened?"

"Yeah, I—I think I can do that." 

"Now, I'm not saying ignore reality, just to be clear. Just … don't assume the worst out of the gate."

"Yeah, I get it. Thanks, Linda." 

"You're welcome." Chloe can almost hear her smiling. "See you guys tomorrow?"

"We'll be there, unless he pitches another fit."

They exchange final pleasantries. With a soft groan, Chloe climbs to her feet and stops her playlist. Then she goes in search of her wayward Devil. 

* * *

He's lying on the couch in her darkened living room, stretched out under the blue thermal blanket she'd draped over him earlier in the day, when he'd still been crumpled on the floor, depleted. The iPad she gave him rests on the coffee table next to the remote, both within easy reach. The light of the muted television flickers against his skin. Moving shadows almost camouflage the exhausted smudges hugging his eyes. 

"Hello, Detective," he says without opening his eyes.

She stops short. "Sorry, I was just gonna turn off the television for you." 

"You didn't wake me; I'm merely resting my eyes."

She gestures at the couch. "Mind if I sit with you?" 

"If you like." 

He rubs his face, his palms rasping against his unchecked stubble, his knees rising to form twin peaks. 

Eyeing the edge of the blanket, which is tucked under his toes, she sits on the end cushion. "Do you want anything?" she offers. "I could fix you a cup of decaf?" 

"No, thank you."

"Can I touch you?" 

"Yes." He yawns. "Apologies; I'm knackered."

"You don't need to apologize to me." The memory of him collapsed on the floor, too weak to lift his own head, burns her mind like a solar flare. She strokes the blanket over his shins, giving him a feel for her intrusion, before slipping her fingers behind his Achilles tendons. "Color?" 

"Green."

Pulling his feet into her lap, she reaches under the blanket. She massages his soles firmly, not tickling. His skin is warm. And soft. And smooth. No calluses or corns or other imperfections. Another subtle sign he's not human. 

"Color?" she asks again.

A smile ghosts his features. "Still quite green, I assure you."

"Okay. Just checking." 

His toes flex against her finger; she kneads each digit in slow succession, the rasp of skin on skin filling the quiet. 

"That feels lovely," he murmurs.

She glances at the television. In the dark of late afternoon, the bright pastels make her eyes hurt. "Lucifer?"

"Hmm?"

"… Why on earth are you watching _My Little Pony_?"

His eyes open to glistening slits. "Trying unsuccessfully to muffle your abominable taste in music. Why else?"

"I just wanted privacy."

"Finally having a go with yourself?"

" _No_!"

"Really, it's nothing to be ashamed of." 

"I'm not ashamed," she grits out. "Just … just … you being able to listen in is—"

"Too enticing for you to cope?"

"— _embarrassing_. I'm not an exhibitionist like you."

"Who says I'm an exhibitionist?"

She laughs awkwardly. "Is that a trick question?"

He doesn't answer, instead changing tacks to, "I fully intend to partake of myself now that I've the means. It will be a _delight_."

Like that's supposed to persuade her to go ahead.

Her mind's-eye Lucifer sprawls naked on his back on the guest room bed, touching himself, nothing separating him from her but one lousy wall and one lousy door. The sounds of his soft, pleasured moans tickle her eardrums. Thanks to this stupid compulsion, he'll be coming, literally, to the sound of her voice, and she'll know exactly his blissed expression because she's seen it. More than once. Heat sears across her face. 

"No need for imagining," the real Lucifer adds, as if he's read her mind. "You can watch me, if you like."

"Wha— _no_." 

"Surely, I'm allowed to consent to you _watching,_ if nothing else."

"No!" Fuck. How had this conversation gone so quickly south? "I mean, yes, but—you're _really_ claiming you're not an exhibitionist?"

He grins. "More of a pleaser."

"And you think I'd be pleased to watch you."

"You'd have a marvelous mental picture to take to your own bed, yes?"

"You think I'm gonna masturbate to the idea of you masturbating?"

"Why not?"

Well, at least he's direct. And isn't that a thought. Lucifer, his body arched like a bow, the dark wisps of his happy trail drawing a little payday-is-here arrow pointing to his groin, as he sinks into the throes. He'd spurt onto his belly, look at her with his lusty, dark eyes, and say— 

"You're licking your lip."

Her muscles lock like she's watching a car crash. 

"I do need that foot, you know," he adds indignantly.

Loosening her grip, she strokes the ball of his ankle with her thumb. "Lucifer."

He smirks. "I'll note you haven't told me no."

"No. At least … not right now." 

His smile drips away. 

"Please, stop teasing me," she begs softly. "It's not helping anything."

"Apologies, Detective," he says, wounded, looking away.

"I'm not mad. And I didn't need an apology, least of all from you. I'm just …."

He sighs. "Frustrated."

"Yeah." 

"I suppose I am, as well."

Nodding, she pets his calf, toying with the wiry little hairs dusting his skin. "Our timing with this romance stuff really seems to suck."

A soft chortle makes his body hitch. 

"For what it's worth," she adds, "I'm happy being close to you. Being with my best friend. The rest would just be icing on an already delicious cake." 

"You're actually bloody saying you love me for my _mind_?"

She gives him a wry look. "… Yeah? And your heart, too."

He makes a sound that could be another laugh. "Well, that's a bloody first on multiple levels." Which, though he clearly means to be funny, isn't. 

He stares at the ceiling like he's not sure how he got here, watching a children's cartoon, having his feet massaged by someone who doesn't think touch needs to be foreplay. 

"You'll let me know if you change your mind?" he says.

"I will, but I won't."

"But—"

"I _won't_."

He doesn't seem to know how to reply. He watches the muted television for a moment instead, loosing a deep, subdued sigh.

"Detective," he says slowly, "would you … like me to leave?"

"What?" She frowns at him. "How did you get that from what I just—"

"For a long walk, that is," he rushes to add. "So you can have space."

"Lucifer …."

"You could have a go with yourself," he continues. "Traverse from your bedroom to the bathroom without a towel toga. Throw onion skins down the dispos—"

"I _still_ don't get what's wrong with—"

"—bloody hell, woman," he snaps, glaring down at her, "it's _compost_." 

"But I don't have a compost heap."

"All the more reason to start—what."

She shakes her head, wishing she could kiss him. "You are so anal retentive."

"Yes, well," he huffs, looking away again. 

"I didn't mean that as a bad thing." Just an I-love-you-and-your-bucket-of-idiosyncrasies thing.

"I know, darling."

She returns to the soles of his feet. Pressing her thumbs into the arches, stroking along the tendons. When she drags her fingernail under his big toe, his leg twitches, his sharp intake of breath cutting the silence like a blade. She wraps her fingers around the toe, stroking more firmly as an apology. Tickling … definitely not her goal. Tickling is _not_ relaxing. 

"Seriously, though," she says, "have I given you reason to think I want you gone for a while?"

"You seemed … eager for space, this morning."

She stills. He'd made a joke about consent earlier. Suddenly, his "humor" seems more weighted. 

"You remember?" she asks. 

"You prayed to me when you were gone," he replies. "You told me you hate this. I heard."

She peers down the long line of him. " _That's_ how—"

"Yes."

"But I didn't—"

"Well, you clearly didn't mean to," he says gently. "But you did."

" _How_."

"Any directed thought is a prayer when you're directing it at someone capable of receiving such things."

"But you said human prayers aren't distinct unless you're specifically listening."

"Not, apparently," he grits out, "when the prayer is from my so-called _master_."

She feels sick all over again. "Lucifer, I'm—" 

"I don't accept your apology because you've nothing to bloody apologize for," he says, cutting her off. "You didn't know. You resolved the consequences when you could. End of bloody story."

Wouldn't. Know a grudge. If it bit him. Her throat tightens. "You heard me talking just now? Over the music?"

"No. I know you."

"You said you didn't remember."

"It's come back to me, since."

With a sniff, she rubs her eyes. Her fingertips slip against wet skin. 

The blankets rustle as he sits up, kicks his feet over the side of the couch, and scoots across the cushions. He wraps his arms around her, pulling her close, though he says nothing. Sagging against him, she inhales. He smells of silk and soap. 

"I won't insult you by saying it's all right," he murmurs against her hair. "It is not. But I am … here." 

"I thought I'd done to you what … what Lilith did."

"Mere hours of that cannot break me, Detective. I was only disorientated for a time." Like he feels some need to defend his "lack" of mental fortitude.

"I can see that," she assures him. 

He stares into space, toward the rainbow zipping across the television screen, his left palm nervously stroking his thigh, the motion pronounced enough to make both their bodies sway. 

"Lucifer, do _you_ wanna take a long walk?" she asks.

"Being separated from you makes me … uneasy."

The forced blandness in his tone makes her ache. Uneasy, he says. More like terrified. Yet he'd asked if she wanted him to leave anyway.

"You'll always have me with you if you take the iPad, right?" she counters. "Or, if you want, I can give you my personal phone when you go out. Easier to put in your pocket."

"I …." The glow of the television highlights the yearning expression he directs toward the slider. "Yes, I suppose I could now."

"Do you want to go?" she repeats.

"It's not a reflection on you." 

"I know that. Everybody needs alone time." 

"I'm grateful you've given me shelter," he continues, almost babbling. "And you've more patience than a saint. Believe me; I've known sev—"

"Lucifer," she says softly, squeezing his arm, "I know. Really. It's okay to want to go. I'm honestly surprised you haven't already pushed for it. My idea of a good time's not exactly Jell-O shots and loud music."

"Mine either today." 

"Tomorrow, then. After Linda's? You can get some fresh air while I take a hot bath and de-stress. Much deserved 'me time' for us both."

"That sounds … delightful." The longing in his words is unmistakable. 

Reduce stress, she thinks. Reduce stress, so he doesn't plunge into another addled bout of identity crisis. Even the strongest people need help, sometimes. 

"Wanna watch something with me?" she asks, reaching for the remote. "Anything. You pick."

"This is tolerable."

"But is there something you want to watch? _Body Bags_ , or …?"

"In truth, I … find this"—his brow creases like he can't precisely find the word he wants—"relaxing."

She blinks. "Relaxing. The Devil finds _My Little Pony_ relaxing."

"What?" he replies with a sheepish expression, the hand at his thigh finally pausing. "It was the first thing in your queue."

"This is Trixie's profile."

"Ah. Well. The child has acceptable taste."

Lucifer, a Brony. Talk about unexpected. Then again, Chloe Decker. A Devil Bunny. Life is strange. She hits the mute button, and the volume resets to normal levels. 

"We're _friends_?" Discord is saying. 

Fluttershy lifts off her seat, flapping her yellow wings. "Of _course_!" she exclaims. "I can't remember my house ever being this lively before _you_ came along."

"Oh." Discord's eyes glisten. "Well, I've … never really had a friend before."

"You know what?" Chloe interjects, tugging the blanket over her shoulder as she settles. The lapel of his robe is soft against her cheek. "I can see why you like it." 

"Can you?" he asks.

She wraps her arm over his waist. "Yeah, I—"

The doorbell rings. She glances at the digital clock underneath the television. 5:45 p.m. Hmm. She isn't expect—oh. Wait. She _is_ expecting something. 

"I think it's my package," she explains, hitting pause on the remote as she gets up.

Lucifer smirks.

"I mean a box, Mr. Everything Is Innuendo." 

He splays his fingers against his chest. "I said nothing."

"Your face is screaming."

Which only makes Lucifer's smile stretch. Rolling her eyes, she leaves him behind to answer the door. Sure enough, a delivery man waits with a pen, pad, and package. Exchanging quick pleasantries, she signs for her bounty and lugs the box back to the coffee table.

"I got this for you," she tells Lucifer. 

Curiosity burgeons on his face. "Oh?"

"Yeah. It was supposed to arrive yesterday, but nobody was here to sign for it." California is finicky about alcohol deliveries. "Do you need scisso—"

He pulls back the box lid like it's cheap wrapping paper, exposing the half-dozen bottles of single-malt scotch she'd ordered on Wednesday. With a blink, he pulls one loose from the safety packaging to peer at the label. He turns the bottle over.

"Did I get the wrong stuff?" she says anxiously. "I thought I remembered seeing it on your shelf before, but—"

"No. Detective, this was …." He inhales shakily. "This was kind of you. Truly, you didn't need to spend this much mon—"

"Lucifer, I wanted to."

He brushes the label with his thumb, almost like he's petting it. "Then … thank you, Detective." 

"Should I get you a shot glass, or a mug," she replies, grinning, "or did you want to chug straight from the bottle?" Today seems like a chug day. 

When he looks up, his eyes are wet, but warm like kindled fire. "Oh, two tumblers, Detective, if you please." 

She leaves, returning with mugs, just as he's unscrewing the cap from the bottle. Nostrils flaring, he sniffs at the rim with an anticipatory grin as she sets the cups on the coffee table. He laughs. "An interesting choice of 'tumblers.'"

"Not much of a drinker, sorry."

"Any port in a storm, I suppose." 

He pours both mugs almost to the brim, picking up the blue "No. 1 Mom" mug and leaving behind the red "World's Greatest Detective" mug and nudging it in her direction. 

"Oh, for me?" she says, surprised. 

"Of course! Playing a drinking game alone is hardly any fun."

"A drinking game." She frowns at the television. "For _My Little Pony_?" 

"Darling, you'll find I can make a drinking game out of _anything_."

"Okay, that, I believe."

He hits the button on the remote again. From the speakers, drifts a high-pitched pony voice, "By treating Discord as a friend—" 

Lucifer tips his mug back and takes a long swig, his Adam's apple rolling sharply along his throat as he swallows. 

"What?" Chloe says. "Why'd you drink?"

He nods at the screen. "Whenever they say friend."

"Oh, God, we're gonna get hammered in five minutes with this show."

His grin is nuclear. "Precisely, Detective. Two more."

"Why?" she says. 

"They said it twice while you were gaping."

With a laugh, she scoots closer, pulling the blanket around them again. Her knee bumps his thigh. Her hip, his hip. The auto queue loads the next episode as he takes two sips, and she takes three. The liquor is smooth, tasting of smoke and toffee and peat. Like Lucifer. From the few times she's kissed him on the lips, anyway. Lips that are full and lush and framed by her favorite face, and … speaking of stoked fires. She _really_ wants to kiss him. For real. When his consent is bomb proof. 

"Drink, Detective," he tells her, his eyes gleaming, as Spike the baby dragon utters friend again, and even without alcohol helping, the blanket suddenly feels too hot on her shoulders, the world around, too dim. 

Lucifer smiles a beautiful smile, and when she raises the mug to her mouth to play, she aches, because all she sees and tastes is him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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>  [Art by Aelwen](https://aelwen-art.tumblr.com/)   
> 


	29. "ain't got Scotch"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Bonus chapter :D

The exhausting abundance of time—eternity clogging every moment—assures everyone has too much of it. Which means they have plentiful opportunities to talk, even with Hell to manage on Lucifer's part, and Hell to explore on Mr. Lawson's. 

They speak of simple things at first. Likes. Favorites. Hobbies. Mr. Lawson enjoys listening to jazz, going camping, playing paintball, and reading dreck by Tom Clancy. 

"Oh, _dear_ ," is all Lucifer can say with exaggerated affront. He stares down his nose at the ball of light floating beside him. "Well, you enjoy jazz, at least, so I suppose you're not entirely without merit."

"Have ya ever even tried campin'?" Mr. Lawson counters.

Lucifer sniffs, inspecting his ring. "I've slept, literally, amongst the stars. Far preferable."

Mr. Lawson shimmers, luminescent tendrils curling and twisting as though he's searching for an appropriate reaction. They sit upon the sharp, blade-like ridge overlooking Desolate Quarry. Hot caustic wind gusts against them, rising from below like the occasional lash of a whip. No ash or sand falls from the dark, frothing sky. It's … peculiar. And yet it's become regular.

When Mr. Lawson finds his wits again, he says weakly, "I'm … assumin' ya don't mean stars in Hollywood."

Memory is a sudden, searing ache as the Detective coalesces in Lucifer's head. Her eyes glisten with tears, her pupils filled with his reflection. _Please, don't leave_ , she'd said. He finds himself reaching into the abyss to touch her face, only for his fingertips to brush brimstone-laden air instead of skin. The image blows away like dust.

"No, Mr. Lawson," Lucifer replies as he pulls his hand back, "while true—I've slept amongst those stars as well—I did _not_ mean Hollywood."

"So … in space?"

"Yes."

"What was that like?"

"Terribly cold. Like most of Creation." Lucifer shudders as he looks up. "That was pre-Earth, of course." Hell's sky has no stars. Only bleak, black clouds. Perpetual night. He despises the darkness as much as the dirt and gloom and loneliness, and before he can think better of sharing, he finds himself admitting softly, "I … miss them." Her. "My stars." _Her_. "They were beautiful. And bright." He rubs the bridge of his nose. "Nothing here is beautiful or bright but me and now you; I find it taxing." A prison. Their prison, no matter they're both free to leave.

"What's wrong?" Mr. Lawson asks.

"I've a headache is all."

"Archangels get headaches?"

Lucifer laughs, the sound clipped and wry. "Anyone with a cranium and sickness of spirit can have a headache, Mr. Lawson."

"You're sick?"

"Who wouldn't be, in this place?" 

"The demons seem pretty keen on it." 

"True," Lucifer concedes with a sour snort. "Helps they've no soul to warp and wither, though. They begin and end as warped and withered as they'll ever be." 

"Do ya have a soul?"

"Something analogous enough to be called that, yes."

Warmth presses close to Lucifer's side, and the pounding behind his skull eases to a dull throb. "You'll get back to your stars, someday," Mr. Lawson assures him. "This place ain't all there is."

Lucifer turns with a discerning gaze. "Finally starting to remember, are we?"

"Yeah." Mr. Lawson expands and contracts as his conflicted emotions unfurl and reorientate. "Thank ya for showin' me."

"Have you tried popping off to the Gates yet?" Lucifer prods. "See if my sister might pick you up?"

"Not yet. I ain't ready."

Lucifer nods. "In due time, I'm certain."

"Maybe someday." 

A comfortable silence stretches between them as they listen to the distant pounding of metal on rock. The demons' persistence has cut the Quarry so deep, the hole seems more like a chasm reaching into the Void than a home, or a resource grab, but, still, they dig. Countless flickering points of light fill the inky black, each marking a cave—someone's dwelling—along the remote cliff faces. 

"Y'know," observes Mr. Lawson, "this place looks like night sky when the ash ain't fallin'. Have ya noticed?"

"Indeed, I have not." Lucifer tilts his head, squinting. At first, the faraway flames are nothing but utilitarian points of light, each marking narrow pathways carved into rock. But as the moments pass, the flames become new constellations. A tapestry. His wings itch to be unfurled. "I suppose it does," he admits with wonder, chuckling buoyantly as he turns back to Mr. Lawson. "Perhaps we can both use one another's perspective in the dark."

He feels Mr. Lawson's smile. 

Another point of light in the dolor.

A light who shouldn't be here.

"Promise me, something, will you?" Lucifer asks softly. "From one perspective to another."

"Yeah?" 

"If ever you've the urge to visit the Gates, do so immediately. Don't allow some misguided desire to say goodbye catch you in a quagmire. Go, and be free of this place." 

"Maybe someday," Mr. Lawson agrees. "Promise me somethin', too?"

"Yes?"

"Don't stop lookin' for a way out just cuz ya think there ain't one. Maybe y'need another you to show ya the door."

Lucifer laughs again, bitter as strychnine. "I very much doubt Dad would make another me"—he breathes deeply enough to make his chest inflate despite the sulfuric burn of brimstone—"let alone send anyone to show me an exit strategy."

"Ya never know. Maybe he already has."

"Well, I'd drink to that if I'd any scotch."

"Aw, man. Hell ain't got scotch?"

A pang makes his chest constrict like a camera shutter. "Hell has nothing worth anything at all."

"So much for callin' it the Devil's water, huh." 

"Are you a scotch drinker, Mr. Lawson?"

"Used to be."

"Well, then," Lucifer says, smiling as Mr. Lawson's list of one merit becomes two, "toast me when you reach the Silver City, will you? Say the Devil made you do it. I can only imagine Dad's ensuing apoplexy at that little plot twist."

Mr. Lawson laughs. "Deal, man. Deal."

* * *

The headache comes and goes. Waxes and wanes with no rhyme or reason. At worst, it's the steady pounding of a hammer, cracking Lucifer's skull apart in time with his heartbeat. At best, it's a faint, irritating buzz; a fly. The pounding has waxed again to hammer strikes as he sets down on his balcony, only to halt mid-motion, his wings still spread, each feather stretched to catch the scalding winds of Strife. 

"What?" Lucifer says, a useless stutter.

The word is enough to wake Mr. Lawson, who'd been daydreaming by the hearth. "What, what?" replies Mr. Lawson. He shifts, following Lucifer's gaze, and adds uselessly, "When did that get here?" 

A pristine bottle of Lucifer's favorite Bowmore rests on the nightstand by his bed, the clear, smooth glass made a beautiful caramel color by the liquid contained within. Two spotless crystal tumblers rest beside it. 

Lucifer's hip bumps into the sharp edge of the bedframe as he rounds the corner too quickly. He snatches the bottle, inspecting the label as he folds his wings away. 

"I thought ya said Hell ain't got scotch," says Mr. Lawson.

"It bloody well _doesn't_ ," Lucifer replies, baffled. "You didn't see anyone leave this here?"

"Nah, not a soul—er … demon, I guess." 

"And you heard nothing."

"Not a thing, man."

Lucifer unscrews the cap and sniffs. Peat and smoke. Alcohol. High proof. His mouth waters at the mere hint, but he resists the urge to take a swig. 

Poison, perhaps? 

But no poison accessible from Hell could fell him. No denizen beside Mr. Lawson can even enter Lucifer's bedroom while it's sealed, and it had been sealed while he'd been surveying Strife. It's _still_ sealed, save for the barrier closing off the balcony, which he'd only dropped just now before he'd landed. 

He glares at the remaining warding—bright blue pulsating glyphs that bar the doorway and walls. They glow and hum and _burn_. The mark of the Lightbringer. Not even other angels can break through without effort. And, certainly, an invading angel would have woken Mr. Lawson. 

Lucifer Speaks, "Open."

The runes fade. The light dims. 

"Squee!" he yells into the hallway, his voice echoing off the smooth stone walls. " _Squee,_ come here at once!"

Claws skitter across stone, as if the little demon had been waiting just outside. Beady, glowing eyes peek around the doorjamb, out from underneath a heavy cloak. "Yes, sire?"

Lucifer holds out the bottle, fighting not to grimace as the pounding behind his skull intensifies, stabbing knives into his sinuses. "How did _this_ get here? It wasn't here when I left."

Squee squints, inching closer. His beak nose juts out as he sniffs the scotch like a bloodhound, and then he retreats, back under the safety of his cloak. "What is it, my king?" 

"Scotch," Lucifer says. "You've no inkling how it got here?"

Squee is quick to shake his head. "No, my king. No one has been to your chambers since you departed."

Lucifer sets the bottle down with a clink and leans in. Squee, dwarfed, cowers and shrinks, his spine seeming to lose several vertebra of length. Lucifer grips Squee's chin, forcing him to look up. 

"Sire, I—"

"You'd tell me, my lovely little snitch," Lucifer purrs, stroking Squee's jawline with his thumb, "if you or your brethren had done this."

"Oh, yes, sire," Squee preens—if he were a dog, his tail would wag. "Consider me your eyes and ears, always." He makes no mention his "gift of gab" extends in all directions. To anyone who will listen. 

"What of your mother?" Lucifer prods. "You'd still tell me, yes?"

"Of course, my king. Happily."

"Remove your hood."

Squee complies, his long, gnarled fingers trembling as he does so. 

"I'd do anything you ask," Squee says in a tiny voice. "Or … or, I'd try. Please, sire, I'd try."

Lucifer searches Squee's face, tracing the wrinkled, leathery lines of skin, the glinting, onyx-colored irises and pupils. There is no lie there. None. "Hmm."

"Can ya drink it?" says Mr. Lawson.

Lucifer releases Squee and picks up the bottle again, liquid sloshing. The glass is cold against his palms. Longing stirs in his gut. "I would … enjoy it," he admits softly. "I've not had scotch in …." He doesn't know how long. His sense of time is ash. 

"But?" prods Mr. Lawson.

"But I've no idea where it came from. No idea what's in it." No way to confirm, without consuming it, whether it's good or bad. Perilous or safe. Hell doesn't have a Ms. Lopez to solve its mysteries, but it does have Lilith, always plotting, always testing boundaries. "Only a fool would consume it, and I am no fool." 

"Surely anyone living here knows that, too," says Mr. Lawson. "Anyone here knows _you_."

"What of it?"

"Seems silly for someone to try poisonin' ya in a place that ain't got no drink. Might as well emblazon the glass with a skull and crossbones." Mr. Lawson pauses, stressed. "Also, it's the most expensive stuff I ever fuckin' seen—I'm literally _dyin'_ at the thought ya ain't gonna drink it."

"You're already dead. You can't literally die."

"Figure of speech."

"Well, then it isn't literal."

"Man, has anyone ever mentioned you're anal retentive?"

With a huff, Lucifer hides the scotch in his dresser, trying to ignore a not insignificant impulse to listen to Mr. Lawson. No. No, Lucifer will take the bottle into Death's Rows and dump the contents in the labyrinth. He'll smash the glass and spread its glinting pieces like stars across Strife and Discord. He'll be _smart_. Later. 

When his head isn't pounding.

"What if it's like the piano?" Mr. Lawson is asking. "What if it's just … y'know, a _good_ thing?"

"Good things do not happen here."

"Uh, hello," says Mr. Lawson. "If that were true, I wouldn't be—"

"No." Lucifer clenches his fists, smothering embers of hope before they catch fire. "I cannot abide _maybes,_ Mr. Lawson. Not in this place." He struggles enough as it is. 

Mr. Lawson doesn't speak, his light dimming slightly. 

"Leave me, please," Lucifer says softly. 

Both Squee and Mr. Lawson turn to go.

"I didn't mean you, Mr. Lawson, unless, of course, you desire it." 

Mr. Lawson stops. Squee scrambles into the hallway. Lucifer slams the wards into place again, securing himself from harm. 

"You okay?" Mr. Lawson asks.

"No," Lucifer admits around the growing lump in his throat. 

With a flick of his hand, he extinguishes the hearth, plunging the room into darkness, save for the nuclear light of Mr. Lawson. He pulls the black sheets from his bed, reflexively giving them a shake before tucking them under the mattress again. No ash clouds mushroom into the air. Not even silica. It's not gritty. Not _dirty_. 

Fortuitous.

_Peculiar._

But he hurts too much to do more than note the oddity. Fireworks explode behind his eyelids as he pulls the sheets to his chin and curls away. Nausea coils in his empty gut. He'd vomit if he had anything inside.

A sudden warmth at his back makes him gasp. 

"Just me," soothes Mr. Lawson. "I'm here." He stretches along the length of Lucifer's spine, easing out of his spherical shape, into an ellipsoid.

"You should go to the Gates," Lucifer says. "Be free."

"Soon," Mr. Lawson agrees. "Right now, I'm here." _For you_ , he doesn't add.

Almost worse than a maybe—something perfect, _needed_ , but transitory by necessity. Lucifer pulls an ash-and-sand-free pillow over his head, shutting out the remaining light, though that doesn't cease the fireworks. 

Later, Lucifer thinks.

He'll deal with all of this … later.

* * *

"Perhaps your new pet did it," Lilith suggests with a nonchalant shrug.

"He is _not_ my pet."

" _Vermin_ , then," she corrects, enunciating each syllable with distaste.

Lucifer clenches his teeth, fighting not to explode at her. After hours, months, millennia—time is meaningless when it crawls—his headache refuses to abate. The scotch had not been the product of a nightmare. The bottle had still been waiting for him when he'd woken up, so he'd summoned them to court. 

_All_ of them. 

Every denizen but souls—all his subjects—on threat of immolation. The wending, winding line of them had twisted through the Plain of Discord like an anaconda, advancing one by one as he'd asked: did you clean my room or leave me liquor? 

Bloody ridiculous questions, he's aware. But he's looked almost every single one of his demons in the eyes, gauging for lies, and found none. 

Lilith had arrived toward the end of the questioning, unhurried, her expression flat and bored. She hadn't deigned to wait her turn. Instead, she'd slunk to the front—no one had dared block her. No one had seemed _interested_ in daring. 

"You haven't answered my question," he grits out. 

"Haven't I?"

" _No_."

She regards him for a long moment, her arms folded haughtily over her chest, her dark eyes an empty abyss. She licks her lip—not sinuously, more … appetized—and says, "My king, you _must_ put it back where it belongs." The soft rumble of multiple agreements rolls behind her like a wave, from the demons he has yet to question. "Immediately. Before—"

"Before, _what_ , Lilith," he snaps, his temper fraying. "What, precisely, are you insinuating?

"I insinuate nothing," she insists, holding up her hands, exposing the harpy tattoo sprawled across her bare belly. "Of _course_ , your will is my own."

"Of course," he parrots. 

A cold, empty smile oozes onto her face, like she told a joke, and he missed the punchline. 

The pain behind his eye sockets burgeons from spoons scooping out his insides to a pair of knives, stabbing them. He will not flinch. Or moan. Or rub his eyes. Not around _her_. Not in front of _them_. 

"Feeling … _drained_ , my king?" she asks.

His gut drops, a glacier sliding through. "What have you done?"

She rolls her eyes. "Really, you're terribly paranoid, these days. Accusing us of silly things."

Another rumble of agreement spills through the crowd behind her. He snaps to his feet and closes the meager distance between them. 

"You have _done_ something," he almost snarls. "What. Have you _done_."

"To be clear," she says, pouting at him mockingly, "are you suggesting I brought you liquor, or"—she pats his cheek with her cold hand like he's a child—"that I made your bed?"

Defiant chuckles spill through the waiting demons.

He shoves her away and points at the exit. "Get out. Now. Before I change my policy on unsolicited smiting."

Her smile returns, this time genuine enough to crinkle the skin around her eyes. "All too happy, my king."

She doesn't bow. Turns her back on him without a by-your-leave. Sashays to the double doors as the opposite end of the hall like she owns the whole bloody palace.

She is _different_.

More brazen, if that were possible.

His eyes narrow.

She is _doing_ something. To him. Around him. In spite of him. Perhaps all three.

How? He doesn't know. He is immortal.

_Invulnerable_.

Excited murmurs echo off the obsidian walls. 

"Silence!" he booms.

The commotion over Lilith's audacious departure ceases. All gazes return to him, but they are not as they were. He is no longer exalted or feared. His might is not absolute. He has lost … something. 

The walls feel like they're closing in. His breaths tighten. His head is _pounding_. 

He has no one.

Aside from a single fragile soul. 

He slumps onto his throne, gesturing the next demon forward. "Zemiscion, tell me, have _you_ been to my chambers?" he asks, his tone tepid, even as his internal glacier spreads into all his limbs, and he wonders how she plans to slit his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everybody who takes the time to leave feedback—I really appreciate it :)


	30. "obtuse to your acute"

She's yanked awake like she was shot from a gun. Her alcohol dream—some weird, uncomfortable but not nightmarish brain flotsam involving a work meeting she'd forgotten because Rainbow Dash was arguing with Lucifer about the best hot sauce for tacos—shatters to the sound of him moaning like some kind of wounded animal. 

She rolls onto her side, stomach churning.

He reeks of scotch—the strangulating stench of it bleeds from his pores, making her stomach lurch. He's curled in a loose fetal position, his bare shoulder pale in the pre-dawn light, his breaths shallow gasps. He's clutching his head between his forearms, his elbows almost touching in front of his nose, his fingers clasped at the nape of his neck, as though he's trying to block out noise—or … trying to keep his brain inside. 

"Lucifer," she whispers. "Lucifer, wake up." 

Another moan of discomfort. His loose fetal position becomes a tight one as his knees press toward his chest. A croaky but conscious, "Oh," caps the movement. 

"Hey," she soothes. "You were having a nightmare. It sounded bad."

He doesn't speak. 

"I'm gonna pull up the covers, okay?" 

Nothing.

His silence sends a discordant chill down her spine. "Lucifer?"

She slides out of bed and walks to his side, pausing as the room revolves around her. Swallowing back nausea, she kneels by the nightstand. He's awake, maybe, but between his arms and elbows, she can see his pupils blown wide like black pie plates while he stares at some invisible shadow. Waving slowly at him does nothing.

"Hey, do you see me? It's Chloe. You're in my bedroom." Everything is okay, she wants to say. You're safe. Everything is fine. But this _stupid_ compulsion. "Lucifer?"

Nothing.

"Lucifer?" she asks again. "Lucifer, it's Chloe."

His eyes finally seem to fix on her. 

She smiles despite feeling sick. "Hey. It's me. It's Chloe, yeah? The Detective? Your Detective? You were having a bad dream."

A soft, awful sound catches in his throat. He says something unintelligible. Terrified. 

"It's me. It's the Detective. Can you not move again?"

The question seems to spark curiosity. His hands, which he'd pressed against the sides of his head, slowly shift, until the heels of his palms frame his nose, concealing his expression. He sucks in a breath like he's an inch short of sobbing.

"Detective …?" he says uncertainly.

"Yeah. Yeah, it's me. You were dreaming; that's all."

"It smells like a bloody distillery."

"Yeah, well, we drank a lot." 

He doesn't reply.

"Do you want a glass of water? Tylenol?" she asks. "Anything?"

No answer.

"I'm gonna pull up the blanket, okay?"

"Okay …." An empty echo. Like he didn't understand what she asked, but now she can't see his eyes for clues. 

_Just be there,_ Linda had said. _Make sure he knows he's not alone._

"I'm here," Chloe murmurs, grabbing the down comforter and covering him up to his chin. His hip flexes as he curls tighter underneath. 

"I should have taken care of her sooner," he says, regrets simmering. " _Attempted,_ at least. I'd the means, and the signs were there. But I was too bloody sympathetic."

"Lilith?" Chloe asks. 

"I was a fool."

"Hey, it's not foolish to care."

His deep, sucking breath makes the blankets shift. The soft, subtle sounds of his ensuing dissolution make her ache. "Please, break my curse, Detective. I want to be free. _Please_."

"I wish I cou—" She stops herself just in time. "We will. Lucifer, we _will_. I promise."

Facing away from her, he grieves. Quietly enough for her to wonder if she's imagining things.

"Want me to leave?" she asks softly.

"No."

"Wanna talk about your nightmare?"

"No. I wish to forget it." 

Just be there. She can be there. She can do that much.

She picks her book off the nightstand. _The Wicked King,_ by Holly Black. She's been on a YA kick ever since _Class of 3001._ She doesn't bother straightening the dog-eared page where she left off. She won't absorb a single syllable, not when she's crushed by an empathy vise while hungover. But. She props her pillows behind her, and she sits with him.

"Would you think less of me if I killed him?" he asks after a while, the words thick and twisted and tired.

"What?" She glances at him, sinking inside. "Killed who?"

"What if I killed someone else?"

"Lucifer—"

"Would it be like Cain? Would you reject me again?"

Bakasura's vague but horrifying hints burn bright. "Lucifer, is this hypothetical?"

"I …." The blankets rustle. He pushes them back from his face, rolling onto his back to stare blankly at the ceiling. His eyes are bloodshot, the skin of his cheeks irritated. "Detective, I've no idea. Everything's muddled."

"How much do you remember?"

His fingers clench, repetitively pulling up fistfuls of the blanket like the motion's a nervous tic. Like he does when he pets his thighs or his lapels. He has lots of nervous tics now.

"Lucifer?"

"Nothing," he says. " _No,_ I … I remember nothing." He squints at her, disorientation blooming on his face. "What were we talking about?"

She sets her book down again. "Can I put my arm around you?" 

"Yes."

She scoots closer, lining her shoulder up with his armpit, and slings her arm across his chest. "Can I kiss you just a little?" she asks. "Not on the mouth, just …." 

"You could kiss me on the mouth," he replies, his lips quirking into a slight smile. 

But, no, she really can't. She presses her mouth to his cheek, lingering, before she tips her head, resting her forehead against his temple and sideburns. "Lucifer, I don't think less of you for _any_ of this; I never will. Anything you did to escape that nightmare was self defense. And anything else? She forced you, and that's not your fault. Okay?"

"I … all right." He sounds confused.

"I'm not gonna reject you. I accept you. All of you. I'm sorry it took me so long." 

An awkward laugh twists his expression. "Detective, of course not. I didn't think—"

She kisses his cheek again. Clearly, he _does_ think. A little. Maybe subconsciously rather than deliberately unvoiced. But he does. In the parts of his mind he keeps erasing. The parts he needs gone to cope with this deplorable situation. 

"I love you very much," she says, rubbing his arm. "I'm Team Lucifer all the way, yeah?" Lilith can suck it.

Another small laugh. "Well, I don't know what I've done to deserve this sudden shower of affection, but I certainly won't say no to it."

"You're you. Isn't that enough?"

"Is it?"

"You have a side in my bed, Lucifer. What do _you_ think?"

"I …." A pause. "Oh."

"Yeah," she says, smiling. " _Oh_." She kisses him again, pushing her fingers through his hair and then rests against him—her morning star—waiting for the dawn.

* * *

They don't have to be at Linda's until 12:30 p.m., so they take their time, resting. Lucifer gets up before she does, though she can't decide if he's recuperated or running away. 

They're in the car, already cruising down Wilshire Boulevard, listening to some news report about an emergency hospital closure in Detroit, when Chloe gets a call from work. According to dispatch, a woman matching Piper Abernathy's description has returned to the house in Hollywood Hills. 

"I must say, Janine," Lucifer enthuses beside Chloe, "you've excellent timing."

"Really?" gushes the operator, just as the newscaster says something about a gas leak.

"Indeed," replies Lucifer, turning down the volume on the radio with an outstretched hand. "Visiting Doctor Linda is okay"—Chloe's gut swoops when she hears him parroting the sentiment she's pretty sure she forced on him—"but _not_ visiting Doctor Linda so we can solve a murder instead is quite a lot more entici—"

"Ten-four, _thank_ you," Chloe says pointedly, disconnecting the call. 

A balmy breeze spills through the cracked-open car windows. She merges into the left turn lane. Cars swish by on the right. 

Lucifer's brow furrows as he regards the street sign for Rexford Drive. "Would it not be quicker to continue on Wilshire?" 

"If we were going to Hollywood Hills, sure."

"I don't mind if we cancel."

The light changes; she turns onto Rexford. 

"Really," he assures her, "I'd prefer to catch the bad guy."

"I know, but," she says, glancing at him, "speaking as your friend—"

"My _friend_?" he almost laughs. "Are we not substantially more?"

"I didn't want to assume. And I didn't want to force you."

A smile tugs at his lips. "You can't force me if it's already true, yes?"

Yes. _Please_ , yes. Warmth spreads through her chest. No. _No_. She grips the steering wheel. "We don't really have a future right now," she hedges. 

The twinkle in his eye doesn't die. With a humoring sigh, he relaxes against the window sill. "Has anyone ever told you, Detective, you're abysmal at spontaneity?"

"Well," she retorts lamely, "well, you suck at planning." 

"How lucky am I, then, to have a teammate who excels at it?" The sudden injection of hopefulness into his tone is impossible to miss. 

Teammate. That's … a choice word. A weighted word, given the past week. 

But. 

The _right_ word. 

In so many ways. Her lower lip trembles a little before she gets a hold of herself. Who the hell knew she'd fall in love with Satan? Who the hell knew he'd fall in love with _her?_

" _Very_ lucky," she decides. "And … ditto. Not about the planning, just … I'm lucky to have you as my complement."

"Obtuse to your acute," he replies warmly, "the Devil in a nutshell."

A lump forms in her throat. 

"Look," she says, returning to the original subject, "as your _teammate,_ unless you're dead set, I'm thinking putting off Linda's is a bad idea. Not after yesterday, or this morning. You're _ill_." That he doesn't even try to protest her assessment convinces her she's right to push. "Just … I know it sucks, and it's not fun, but Linda can help you with a lot of stuff I can't."

"You help me, as well." 

"And I'm glad, but I'm not a professional. Linda is."

He stares at the smooth road ahead of the car. Unlike large portions of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills does a stellar job at maintaining its pavement, and Rexford is no exception. A bright wall of sunlight spills onto the asphalt, turning blue-black into light gray. 

"The suspect'll keep a few hours while you get help if you want," she continues, "and you're _way_ more important than this investi—"

"Extend my range," he says.

"What?"

"Or … try, at least," he amends. 

"Why?"

He glances at the clock on the dashboard. "It's already afternoon. By the time I've finished with Doctor Linda, we've trekked across town to interview our potentially murderous dom, and then returned to your domicile, the day will have been nearly exhausted, your child's return from the wilderness imminent. You'll not have had any of the space you desired."

"Or _you."_

"Yes, precisely. Something we both desire. So, let's save time, shall we? It's not as though I've no way to transport myself. The only problem has been my being tethered."

Logical. "You're … sure?"

"Not really." He licks his lip nervously, shifting in his seat. "But you're ill, as well."

She frowns.

"I can see you've been stressed by my distress, and …." He closes his eyes, adding softly, "And you're quite a lot more important than avoiding punishment from this bloody compulsion."

That he's willing to try putting miles between them, despite what had happened yesterday, despite _everything_ …. Her heart constricts. Talk about trial by fire. She glances at the door's side pocket, where he'd put the iPad she'd given him. 

"I'll give you my personal cell," she decides. "So you can call me if you have any trouble." He'll still have the recorded commands, too, thanks to the cloud.

"Perhaps we should see if it's feasible first?" he says.

"Now?"

"The sooner we try, the more time we'll save, yes?"

She pulls to the curb, into the first parallel parking spot she sees, before taking her phone out of the cupholder and navigating to her notes. 

"Ready?" she says. 

He nods, tensing.

She reads off the freedom of movement command she'd formulated for him, this time extending the allowable distance to twenty miles. He visibly cringes, teeth clenching enough to make his jaw bulge at the corners. But a moment passes. He doesn't safe word. Then he blows out a breath, relaxing. 

"Oh, it bloody well _worked_ ," he says.

She extends his freedom to interact with objects, again with no trouble. He strokes his lapel idly, shifting in his seat, not like he's nervous but rather can't wait to stretch, to _fly_. She reaches across the car, proffering her cellphone to him. He pockets it with an infectious grin. 

"Right, then," he says, smiling, "see you back at your place tonight? Or shall I catch up to you at the Hollywood Hills house before setting out?"

"My place. I'll text you if I need you, yeah?"

"Very well." 

The cushion squeaks as he leans across the parking brake and presses his lips to her cheek. A more than friendly, less than lusting goodbye from the Devil. 

"Bye, darling," he says.

And then he's gone. 

A simple parting, albeit with spectacular facets. 

He's _free_.

Well, more than he'd been, at any rate.

She glances at the seat he'd vacated, her fingers cupped over where he'd kissed her. The space smells vaguely vanilla. The Clive Christian No. 1. 

She misses him already. His smell, and his snark, and his suits, and his swagger. With a wistful sigh, she pulls back onto the street, and alters course for Hollywood Hills.

* * *

In the daylight, Chloe can see the koi pond. The water, cycled by a Buddha statuette to form a fountain, glistens in the sun. The house looks substantially larger in the light of day. The driveway is still empty, but the garage, which had been left gaping on Friday night, is now shut. 

Chloe taps on the glass of the prowl car parked diagonally, three houses from Ms. Abernathy's place. Chloe and the waiting uni exchange quick greetings. 

"Mind helping me out?" she asks. "My normal partner had an appointment."

To which the uni readily agrees.

Piper Abernathy, 43, answers the door after five knocks and one bell. In contrast to her stunning DMV photo, she's makeupless, red rosacea splotches covering her cheeks and nose, puffy circles hugging her eyes. Her hair is an unkempt explosion of frizz, and she's wearing a blue satin robe and matching diamond-studded flip-flops. A lowered sleep mask encircles her neck, like she'd been woken from a sound sleep. 

Her bleary gaze fixes on Chloe, who's standing on the left. And then she sees Officer Wu, the uni. 

"… Hi?" says Ms. Abernathy uncertainly, drawing out the h. Her voice is a pleasant, soft soprano.

"Hello, Ms. Abernathy," says Chloe, proffering her badge and a business card to the woman for inspection. "I'm Detective Chloe Decker, and this is Officer Addison Wu. We're with the LAPD."

"Good afternoon, ma'am," Officer Wu interjects, tipping his hat politely.

The card crinkles in Ms. Abernathy's tightening grip as she returns the badge with her other hand. "Did something happen to one of my neighbors?"

"No, Ms. Abernathy, not as far as I'm aware," Chloe replies matter-of-factly. "I'm wondering if you have time to answer some questions pertinent to my current investigation. May we come in for a moment?"

Ms. Abernathy rubs her eyes like she's trying to wake herself up. "What investigation? What's this about?" She glances not so surreptitiously at her cleavage. "Can we do it later? I'm in my pajamas."

"This is a time-sensitive inquiry, Ms. Abernathy," Chloe soothes. "I'm sorry to interrupt your sleep, but I'd really prefer to do it now."

"It's just … I _just_ got back; I'm so jet-lagged my head hurts."

"Oh?" Chloe offers the woman a measured smile. "Where were you flying from?"

"Brisbane. For a shoot."

"A shoot?"

"Yes," says Ms. Abernathy with a tired sniff. "I'm a photographer."

"How long were you there for?"

"Hmm?" Another sniff. "I left … uh … last Sunday. Been there all week. Why?"

Chloe inches forward, digging the tip of her brown boot into the threshold. "Ms. Abernathy, may we come in? I promise, I'll try to keep this short."

"I guess," the woman says. Consent. Chloe relaxes. "In here."

Ms. Abernathy leads them into her living room, a spacious area full of sharp lines and angular, post-modern furnishings. The far wall is solid glass, revealing a sapphire-blue infinity pool, which overlooks the sprawling, LA skyline, just visible in the smoggy haze. Sleekly framed photos accent almost every wall that isn't a window. Over the couch hangs a risqué but artistic black-and-white of a man, naked save for a silk tie cinched around his neck, though his crouched position hides his genitals. His wrists and ankles are bound, and he kneels at the tips of a woman's five-inch stilettos. The woman holds his tie like a leash, while he kisses her shoe. 

_You could do that to me again, you know,_ her inner Lucifer purrs against her ear. _I'd consent._

Chloe shakes her head, her cheeks burning as she turns away to take a seat. 

A fluffy cat rests on the chair Ms. Abernathy selects for herself. With a noisy yawn, she picks it up. It chirps in indignation but resettles quickly when she drapes it across her lap like a throw pillow. The cat seems happy to sprawl, purring, and falls asleep again. Officer Wu, also transfixed momentarily by the photo, eventually settles onto the couch beside Chloe.

"This is a very nice house for a photographer, Ms. Abernathy," she observes, nodding toward the window and the amazing view.

"Call me Piper, please."

"Okay," Chloe agrees. "Piper."

"I worked in real-estate first," Piper explains. "Didn't find it fulfilling, but made a ton on commissions."

Chloe nods, scrutinizing Piper. She's not fidgeting or acting nervous. She's making eye contact, but not constantly like liars tend to do. She allowed them into her home, without any more context than "current investigation." Chloe's definitely not getting murderer vibes from this woman. 

She takes Alastor Blackthorn's DMV photo from her coat pocket and places it onto the glass coffee table. "Do you recognize this man?"

Piper picks up the photo. Doesn't glance longer than a heartbeat before saying, "Sure. Met him last week at a club. Why?"

Direct. No attempts at obfuscation. Interesting. Chloe pulls out her steno pad to take notes. "What club was this?"

"Dominus. It's a fetish club." Piper shrugs before unapologetically adding, "I'm into that."

"When specifically did you meet him?"

"Friday night. Not the Friday just past—I was still in Brisbane—the Friday before."

"When did you last see him?" Chloe asks, jotting down the timeframes mentioned so far. 

"Also that Friday."

Which means Piper has a hole in her schedule from Friday night to her Sunday departure. Basically Mr. Blackthorn's entire time-of-death window. 

"Did you do a scene with Mr. Blackthorn that night?"

"We started, but he got a call and left before we did much."

"Was this here?"

"No, at his place." 

Which is consistent with Mr. Schofield's story.

"Around what time did you arrive at his apartment?" Chloe asks.

"Like 8:30?" Piper says after considering. "Honestly, I'm surprised he never tried to reschedule. I thought we hit it off super well. I don't usually leave the club until a lot later."

"You gave him your number?"

"Yep."

"Did he give you his?"

"Sure. I have it on my cellphone. He texted me after he left that he was really sorry to cut things short." 

Chloe perks up. "Can you tell me the number he gave you?"

"My phone's in the bedroom." Piper yawns again as she sets the cat on the floor. The thing's hair is forked in about fifty wrong directions, and its squished face makes it seem grumpy. It mews, beautiful emerald eyes wide, but Piper ignores its plea. 

Chloe nods to Officer Wu, motioning him to stay put, and rises to follow. Piper gives Chloe a curious look.

"Safety," Chloe says succinctly. 

"Oh." Piper blushes. "Right. Sorry." She pulls her fingers through her thick hair. "I don't have a gun, for what it's worth."

"I believe you." Chloe gestures toward the hall. "Is your bedroom this way?"

Piper doesn't complain as Chloe follows closely after. The bedroom, like the living room, has a glass wall framing the pool and cityscape. More photos decorate the walls—none racy like the black-and-white in the living room, more … eclectic? Chloe pauses, taken by a bright closeup of a pomegranate hanging from a tree, the rich red skin of the fruit covered in glistening dew drops. 

Piper grabs her phone from the nightstand, letting the cord stretch until it pulls loose from the plug. She taps the screen a few times. "See?" she says, tipping the LCD toward Chloe.

Sure enough, there's a text sent from a 323 number, timestamped Friday at 9:13 p.m., both thanking her for a great time and apologizing for leaving abruptly. 

Mr. Blackthorn, speaking from the grave.

Chloe takes a photo of the message, and then writes the phone number on her steno pad just to be doubly sure she has it recorded. Once she looks up the service provider, she'll be able to subpoena phone records, which might fill in some blanks concerning Mr. Blackthorn's movements and associations. 

"Do you know who called during your scene?" Chloe asks as they head back into the living room.

"Some woman."

"A woman?"

"Or someone with a feminine-sounding voice," Piper decides. "The speaker on his phone was really loud."

They reassume their previous seats, though the cat seems to have departed. Officer Wu, who was poking at the coffee table's centerpiece—a glass dish full of pale-colored pebbles—clears his throat and sits back, his shoulder blades pressing into the top edge of the meager loveseat cushion.

"Do you know what Alastor and the woman discussed?" Chloe asks.

"Wasn't loud enough for me to make out," replies Piper. "She sounded like she was crying, but that's all I got."

"Crying, sad? Angry? Scared?"

"Hard to say."

Interesting. "So, he took the call and left immediately after?"

"Right."

"Is it normal to leave a phone turned on during scenes?"

"No, Al put his phone on Do Not Disturb and left it in the other room—that was the first order I gave him," explains Piper, "but the caller did that thing where you call twice in a row to break through. Al was worried it might be an emergency with his kids, so I let him pick up."

"His kids?"

"I don't know. He just said, 'Please, Mistress, it might be my kids.'"

Hmm. As far as Chloe knows, the guy has no family. Maybe he'd meant the fraternity and sorority members he counseled, which … potentially points to the argument he'd had outside his office. "Could anything you did with him have caused a head injury?"

"Uh … no?" Piper scoffs, incredulity blooming. "I'm not into _that_ ; I don't know anybody who is."

"I'm sorry; I didn't mean intentionally."

"You do _not_ hit someone's head during a scene. That's not—" Piper almost looks nauseated. "Just no. No fucking way. Pardon my French."

"No, I know," Chloe rushes to say. "Believe me, I understand. My partner's into BDSM, and he's explained the rules to me."

Piper's gaze ticks toward Officer Wu, who's suddenly blushing hard enough to be lobster kin.

"No, no," Chloe adds, jabbing her thumb awkwardly at Wu, "he's not my normal partner. Um." Wu's eyes only widen. Fuck. So much for respect at the office. "Look, I just meant … did Mr. Blackthorn fall? Bump into anything?" 

" _No_." Piper sways in her seat, agitated. "What the hell is this about? Is Al in trouble or something? Is he okay?" 

"Piper, Mr. Blackthorn is dead. I'm conducting a murder investigation."

"What."

"He's dead, Piper. I'm so sorry."

The woman sucks her lips inward and bites down. Hard. When the fat fluffy cat head-butts her shin, she doesn't react. "But … he was so nice," she says. Her lost, hollow tone; the non sequitur of her response …. 

"I know," Chloe says, repeating, "I'm so sorry."

 _Definitely_ not getting murderer vibes. Combined with the little details corroborated by witnesses and evidence—that she met Alastor at Dominus, that she was at Alastor's apartment, that he texted her after they parted ways—there's no fakeness to her reaction. No overacting or hysterics. Just a quiet unexpected wave of grief. She's either an undiscovered Meryl Streep—not impossible, particularly in this town—or she's telling the truth to the best of her ability. 

Chloe's gut says the latter. "Did you have _any_ reason to believe Mr. Blackthorn had a concussion when you met him?" 

"No," Piper croaks, coughs, and gives herself a shake. "No way. Doing a scene like that's not cool either. Is that … how he died?" 

"I'm sorry; I can't disclose the details of an ongoing investigation." 

"Oh." Piper sniffs. "Okay."

"Can you tell me what you did after Mr. Blackthorn left?" Chloe asks.

"I went home, watched Netflix, and crashed."

"What about Saturday?"

"Packing," answers Piper with a shrug. "More Netflix."

"Do you have anyone who can confirm your whereabouts on Friday after you left the club?"

"Uhhh," Piper says, her voice wavering nervously, "other than Al, not really. My Netflix history, I guess? The GPS in my car?"

"No people, though?"

"No …?" 

"What about Saturday?"

" _No_ , is that bad?"

Chloe folds her notepad, stuffing it back into her coat pocket. "Piper, would you consent to a DNA swab and fingerprinting?" 

"Oh, God, it _is_ bad. I knew it."

"This would just be to help corroborate your story."

Piper looks back and forth between Chloe and Officer Wu. "Should I get a lawyer or something?"

"That is absolutely your right to do so if you want one," Chloe confirms, "but I want to emphasize you're not under arrest, and I can't compel you. Currently, I don't even consider you a suspect."

"But I _was_ a suspect."

"Yes," Chloe answers bluntly. "That's why we came here."

"Did he die the night I saw him?" Piper asks in a panicky tone.

"Unfortunately, I can't disclose details of an ongoing investigation."

"Right. Right, sorry." Piper swipes at her face with her palms. "I touched his cock cage. And his c-collar. And …." She pets the air like she's stroking something hard and smooth. A memory. "He's really dead?"

"Yes. I'm so sorry, Piper." 

"Oh, God, my fingerprints are gonna be all over him if he died that night," she says, looking vaguely queasy.

"Did you have sex with him?" Chloe asks softly.

"No, I _told_ you, we didn't have time."

"Listen, prints on a body aren't necessarily contemporaneous with death. I understand how and why your prints might be co-mingled with the murderer's. It happens. You don't need to worry." Unless Piper had touched the murder weapon, too. Which … Chloe doubts. Not that she's going to reveal her hand. "Would you consent to a DNA swab and fingerprints?" 

"I don't have anything to hide."

"Is that consent?"

"Yes," says Piper tearfully. "If it'll help, just do it."

Chloe directs a long, pointed look at Officer Wu, who nods, and leaves to grab a test kit from his car.

* * *

_All done,_ Chloe texts Lucifer from her car outside of Piper Abernathy's place. _I don't think she did it. Got her prints and DNA for testing. Maybe some new leads too._

 _Oh?_ he texts back. _Do tell._

 _Later, k?_ she replies, waving to Officer Wu as his car rumbles past her window. _Headed home to take that hot bath._

 _Yes._ A pause. _:Devil emoji: Enjoy._ A pause. And then he adds, _Is your vibrator waterproof?_

She rolls her eyes, not dignifying that with a response before tossing her phone onto the passenger seat. Then she pulls away from the curb to head home.

* * *

With a long sigh, she sinks into the water, dropping low enough that the heat envelops her up to her collarbone, and her toes touch the slightly slimy vinyl shower curtain she's pushed to the opposite wall. The bathroom door hangs wide open. Blissfully so, since, for a few scant hours, she doesn't have to worry about anyone barging in. Her apartment is _hers_ , for the first time in more than a week.

The water sloshes as she shifts, letting her knees rise to peaks. The liquid feels slippery, thanks to the heap of epsom salts she'd dumped in while the tub was filling. What she hadn't counted on was the lavender scent of the salts—now wafting with the curling steam—making her think of the fetish store. 

Lucifer's amused, almost purring cadence, as he explained the difference between safety and regular candles. Why lavender might be used in a scene. Why anything.

She'd never actually asked him, she realizes. What specifically he'd be inclined to buy for himself. Not to play a part, or fulfill the desires of others, but to please _himself_.

She snatches her vibrator off the edge of the tub. It's plum-colored and small—the size of an extra large egg, if the egg were flattened somewhat, and bent a bit to form a boomerang shape. It _is_ waterproof. And it's been her steadfast companion through Dan, and Pierce, and the droughts between and after. 

She pushes the power button. It whirs to life, stippling the tub wall with tiny water droplets as she dips under the surface with it, and then presses it between her legs. The concave edge cups her anatomy, focusing the brunt of vibration on her clit.

Sucking in a breath, she closes her eyes, rubbing herself in slow circles.

He would definitely want her to tie him up. Take control. That much is obvious. But what else? Would he want a blindfold? A gag? A leash? A chastity device? Not the Kali's Teeth. Something that isn't painful or punitive, just focused on denial. 

An image sears her mind.

Him kneeling with his face pressed to her pillow, his wrists bound to her headboard. He'd wear the collar and devil horns, a gag and a chastity cage. She'd take him from behind—peg him, he'd called it—until the prostate massage had him panting, delirious from stimulation, _begging_ for more, not because the compulsion made him want her but because _he_ wants her. And then she'd untie him, un-gag him, but not uncage him, and let him have a taste. 

He would spread her legs with his hands against her inner thighs. He would smile at her, his dark eyes glazed with lust, and his tongue would curl suggestively as he said her name. Detective, Detective, _Detect—_

She freezes, the bathroom re-materializing in front of her face. The faint underwater whir of her vibrator fills the quiet. 

She doesn't know what counts as prayer, and she doesn't want to accidentally summon him. Or worse, accidentally trigger him into another meltdown like yesterday morning. 

Heat having nothing to do with arousal blooms across her face. Down her neck. She's playing with fire in a tinderbox.

Does repeatedly exulting his name count?

What about just thinking of his face? Or … other parts.

Fuck, she hopes that doesn't count.

She presses her vibrator against her pubic bone. Frissons of pleasure unfurl through her lower body, independent of her discomfiture. _Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer,_ she thinks—thinks of him, naked, beautiful, hers. _Hers_. She lifts the vibrator away, clutching it, and adds a hesitant, _Did you hear me say your name_? _Does this count as prayer?_ And then she waits, squeezing her eyes shut, grimacing in mortified apprehension.

Her work phone, which she'd left on the floor beside the tub, vibrates.

She peeks with one eye.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

Fuck.

Maybe it's just Dan. Or Trixie. Or work? Or something entirely unrelated. Maybe.

She sets her vibrator aside, and wipes her hands on the towel hanging beside the tub, then picks up her phone. Her stomach swoops.

Lucifer texted her: _Yes_. _Why?_

Fuuuck.

At least, he doesn't seem to have context, or he'd be snarking.

 _Can I just, like,_ she thinks back at him, _blanket tell you not to listen to my prayers for the next … twenty—errr, thirty—minutes?_ _Please?_

 _Detective!_ fills a green chat bubble, and she can hear him saying it in her head. The exact tone. Emphasis on the tec. Pride and faux-scandalized amusement intermingled to flavorful perfection, like chocolate and peanut butter. She can see his teasing smirk, too. _Yes, of course._

The ellipsis pops up, indicating he's typing more. Merciless teasing, probably. She presses her hands against her face, trying not to blush so hotly she starts nuclear fission.

 _Why not tell me never?_ he says.

That's … not teasing. Not at all. _Do you not like me praying to you?_

_I love it. You simply caught me by surprise._

Well, that's … hmm. _Color?_

_Green._

_You're sure?_

_Quite. Thirty minutes isn't nearly enough time for you to relax. Come now; be kind to yourself._

She laughs. That's more like what she'd been expecting. Only he would try to make her barter for _more_ masturbation time, not less. _If I tell you not to listen_ , _will you still hear me?_

He doesn't reply immediately.

_Lucifer?_

_No idea,_ he texts back. _Never tried it before._ :Devil emoji: 

Fuck.

 _Why not pretend I can't and have a good time regardless?_ he continues. Another _:Devil emoji:_. 

_Because it's_ embarrassing, she thinks back. God, this is so surreal having a conversation like this, half prayed, half texted. Her phone vibrates.

 _Why is it embarrassing?_ he's asked. _Everybody fantasizes._

Which … is a decent point.

 _I've heard it all before anyway,_ he continues. _I'm older than time._

Another decent point.

_Also granted I'm quite new at this, but shouldn't being able to share fantasies with each other, whether they're about sex or something unrelated, be a requisite for teammates?_

The decent points are clustering enough to make a pretty bouquet.

 _Will it help you if I promise not to tease?_ he adds.

And the bouquet is tied with a bow. 

She can just imagine his tone again. Soft. Kind. Gentle. For a moment, she doesn't pray, and he doesn't text, while her bravery snowballs from a speck into an avalanche, bowling down the mountain. Really, what does it matter if he can hear her narrating her pleasure via unintended prayer, so long as he isn't compelled by it? They love each other, and—

 _I'd like to hear,_ he confesses at last. _I'll be doing something similar with myself in a moment, and the prospect of you "joining" me is enticing beyond measure._

And into a pile of slush and ice in the ravine she lands. 

_Well, when you put it_ that _way :winky face emoji:,_ she flirts back awkwardly.

_:Devil emoji:_

Her phone clock says it's 3:36 p.m. _When will you be back?_ she prays, emboldened.

_When would you like me to return?_

_You're okay after Linda? You have somewhere you can be and not feel like I'm forcing you to stay away?_

_What, you think I'm going to masturbate on the bloody street? I told you I'm not an exhibitionist._

O … kay, then. _Trixie gets back around 6. How about anytime you want after that?_

_Done._

She takes a breath. _Lucifer, I don't want you to listen to my prayers until today after 6 p.m. Pacific Time._

Her phone vibrates. _Being extra generous with yourself I see. Kudos Detective. Enjoy yourself. :Devil emoji:_

She rolls her eyes, tossing her phone back onto the floor. _Lucifer, can you hear me? Text something._

For several minutes—an eternity—her phone doesn't budge. 

So, even if he can hear, he won't be forced to respond. Good. She glances at her vibrator, trying not to think of it as a scarlet letter. A brand. Telling him exactly what she's thinking. What she's _doing_. Specific, private thoughts she's never shared with anyone, not even Dan.

She picks up the vibrator, thumbing the on button. It kicks to life, almost skipping away from her shaky grip and landing in the bath. She leans back against the tiles and the tub wall, sinking into the warm water again, closing her eyes, imagining him doing the same.

Now, where was she?

Right.

He would smile at her, his dark eyes glazed with lust, and his tongue would curl suggestively as he said her name. Detective, Detective, _Detective._ Then she'd grip the horns she made him wear and push his face between her legs. His lips are the vibrator, cupping her.

"Mmm, Lucifer," she mumbles.

He strokes her thighs with his thumbs.

The world becomes a cloudburst of color.

And then she stops thinking at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everybody who takes time to leave feedback :)


	31. "definitely forking"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! To those who don't, I hope you have a great week/weekend regardless :) My family decided to postpone Thanksgiving this year in light of COVID so I will not be traveling—I don't foresee any interruption in my posting schedule for the time being.

Whether or not the Detective meant to, she'd commanded him not to postpone visiting Dr. Linda. When he'd been busy working out ways to do that—such as asking the Detective to increase his range—when he hadn't been running _late_ , he'd been fine. But, now, whenever he tries to pause his forward motion, something relentless takes over his body, his mind. Something deep and primal and urging. Arousal whose only resolution is to arrive on the Doctor's stoop. 

Not that he minds. Not in this context.

Going to Dr. Linda's is okay. 

The flight from the Detective's car to the Doctor's duplex—half a mile as the angel flies—is less than negligible, and he feels entirely too buoyant anyway. 

He and the Detective _are_ a team. 

She's acknowledged him. 

Overall, their time together since Friday has been lovely. Almost worth the misery of Saturday morning. Of needing without having. Of enduring until his sanity had slipped and fallen, and he'd slavered and begged and rutted with nothing.

Almost.

He's uncertain _anything_ is worth that.

"Lucifer, hi," says Dr. Linda, surprise bleeding from her tone as she peers behind him and finds no one else on the stoop. 

"Yes, hello," he replies brightly. "The Detective and I've split up today to cover more ground." We're _teammates_ , he forces himself not to crow.

"You … split up?" she asks.

"Oh, yes"—he grins—"it's a good thing, Doctor."

"So, nothing to do with yesterday."

He sinks like a bag of cement. 

Yesterday. Saturday.

"What do you know of yesterday?" he asks.

"Just that something happened," Dr. Linda says.

Recollection sears his mind's eye. Of him, clawing himself bloody to escape his skin, of screaming and screaming until his throat broke, of being so close to relief yet never touching—he couldn't _touch—_ and he'd begged and prayed and sobbed for help, beyond dignity or caring, but nobody had been listening— _she_ hadn't been listening, and—

"Lucifer, are you okay?" prods Dr. Linda.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Something must show on his face. Some emotion. Some seething, negative thing, because Dr. Linda schools herself, her expression turning placid, and then she waves him forward, backing away from the door. 

"Lucifer, please, come in," she says, coolly, professionally. "Let's get started."

He tries to ignore his flutter of nerves as he steps warily across her threshold.

Mellow, thoroughly harshed.

* * *

She offers him a glass of water or coffee, both of which he declines. They sit down, she into her favorite wingback chair, and he onto her couch. She places a small cream-colored device onto the end table. The device has a screen the size of a Post-it note, and a rubber antenna. 

"What is that?" he asks sharply, more of his good mood draining away.

"What is what?" She follows his gaze to the table. "What is …?" She picks up the device. "Oh, this?"

"Yes," he says. "What is it."

She smiles at him. "Just a new baby monitor. Charlie's taking his nap. I thought I'd try it out."

Lucifer stares at it, shifting in his seat. "Does it transmit?"

"No, it's just receiving from the little camera in Charlie's room." She hits a button, and the child's pudgy, sleeping face fills the crystal-sharp screen. "See?"

"Ah."

"Is it bothering you? I can move it."

"Why would it bother me?"

"You tell me," she replies with a shrug, concern nudging into her expression by degrees.

Silly. He's being silly.

He breathes roughly, wishing his hackles would lower, but they won't. The hairs on the back of his neck are prickled, standing on end. Like he's being stalked, and his hindbrain is trying to make him notice what's plain. He wants to smash the monitor thing he's never seen before. 

"Lucifer," the Doctor says, "can you tell me what you're feeling right now?"

"It's … unfamiliar."

"The feeling you're having?"

"No"—the _feeling_ feels all too familiar, a memory, memories, paranoia as a state of being—"no, the bloody"—he waves inarticulately at it—"the monitor. It's unfamiliar."

"Do you not like the idea you could be recorded?" 

"No," he almost growls, "I don't like that it's _unfamiliar._ "

The Doctor regards him with an unreadable expression. The child gurgles, a little liquid bubble forming at its lips as it dreams. She flicks a switch. The monitor winks off again. Without a word, she carries the device from the room.

As soon as it's out of sight, he can breathe. His shoulders relax. He rubs his eyes tiredly, feeling foolish again. He, the Lightbringer who warred with Heaven and reigned in Hell, scared of a bloody human _toy_ because it's _strange_. 

"Better?" Dr. Linda asks as she returns.

His lip curls back, almost a soundless snarl. He looks away. 

"Why do you think you reacted that way?" she prods.

" _I've_ no idea," he says. "That's why I bloody well come to _you_ , isn't it?" 

Dr. Linda rubs her jawline with her thumb and index finger, cupping her chin. "I … do have some thoughts about it," she hedges. "Would you like to hear them?"

"Not really." 

"Okay." 

"What the bloody hell do you mean, _okay_?"

Compassion oozes into her expression. "Lucifer, this is supposed to be a productive relationship—one that helps you process your previous trauma in a safe, supportive space—and it's never going to be if you always come here expecting me to ignore your comfort levels. Of _course_ if you say no, stop, or wait, I'll listen." 

His eyes prickle. He sucks in a sharp breath, raising a shaking hand to his face. "Apologies," he blurts, clearing his throat noisily. "Apologies, I don't know what's come over me."

"It's okay." She leans forward, proffering a tissue box across the coffee table. 

He waves the box away, though his chest feels tight—a thick, hurting line sliding down his esophagus like he swallowed a sharpened butcher knife. 

"Remember what we talked about last time?" she says. "Reframing?"

"That … I can trust you. This is helpful."

"Right"—she nods—"right, good, Lucifer. Exactly."

Except it's not. It's not helpful. He wants to rewind to when he'd been _happy_. When he'd been in the car with the Detective, and she'd agreed they were teammates.

"Do you need time to process?" Dr. Linda asks kindly. "I can leave the room."

"No." 

"Okay. Well, is there anything particular you'd like to talk about today?" 

"No." His lower lip trembles. He looks out the window. Everything is blurring. He doesn't know why. "No, I … I've no desire to discuss _anything_. I only came because …."

"Because why?" she asks.

"Because. Because …."

He thinks of her. Her face. Her smile. His _teammate_. 

_You're ill,_ she'd said. 

Somehow, somewhere along the way, she'd made him okay with goingto Dr. Linda's. Not on purpose. Not with malice. But she had. 

She'd kept carting him here in the name of good mental health, much like she carts her child to school in the name of good education. Again, again. He'd been lobotomized with foreign acquiescence, robbed of the ability to separate from her, so he'd gone along with it. Again, again. And like the proverbial frog in a boiling pot, he keeps ending up trapped here, being scalded alive, wishing far too late he'd never jumped in. Again, again.

No amount of "reframing" will fix that.

"I don't wish to be here," he says in a small voice.

"Lucifer, you can leave _any_ time," the Doctor soothes. "I'm not forcing you to stay. No one is."

Except he _had been_. He'd been forced.

"I don't wish to be here," he repeats.

"That's okay. You can leave."

He peers at the door. With twenty miles to run, now, and no Detective loitering, implying with every word, look, and deed, that he should allow himself to be "shrinked," he can leave. His teeth almost chatter as he sucks in another breath, and another. 

He can jump out of the pot.

He can _leave._

He has a choice. 

He curls his fingers against the couch cushions, scooping up tents of upholstery without meaning to. The walls are closing in, constricting him like he'd stepped into a coat closet. "I can't … I can't do this," he admits. "I can't be here. I dislike this. I cannot … _reframe_."

"Lucif—"

" _No!"_ he says, straightening.He has to get _out_. _"_ No, I've no desire to be here." 

With a small sound of panic sticking like taffy in his throat, he soars into the sunshine. Into _his_ light. 

Everything that was too tight to bear loosens a notch, like he broke a link of his chains.

And then he flees.

* * *

The extra freedom is worse, because it isn't.

It isn't freedom.

He's freer.

But he isn't free. 

He loses time for a while, flying in frantic loops like a goldfish circling a claustrophobic bowl. Twenty miles is so much, and yet so little. If he were free he could be at Alpha Centauri already. He could be in another _dimension._ Worse, he doesn't know the precise boundary of free movement he's permitted—only discovers it inch by maddening inch as he zips over the line and feels his limbs deaden. At least, prepared, he catches himself before catastrophic paralysis robs him of his body. 

He's still flying—pacing, stressed, testing the line—when the Detective's phone bings loudly in his pocket. 

Or bings again, he supposes. 

He'd ignored the first many texts.

The screen shows a text from the Detective at the top, and multiple texts from Dr. Linda scrolling into the ether off the edge. 

_Chloe, are you with Lucifer?_ she wants to know. 

_Have you seen Lucifer? Just checking in._

_Is Lucifer okay? Just checking. Let me know, okay?_

And on, and on, and on, and on.

 _Yes he's here_ , he smashes into the tiny popup keyboard. _Stop bloody asking or he'll bloody well panic again._

A pause. 

The Doctor replies, _Lucifer? Why do you have Chloe's phone?_

_Because I'm a slave. I own nothing, least of all a bloody daddamned phone._

_??_

His heart pounds; the vise around his chest constricts again. Snarling, he deletes the whole lot of texts between the Detective and Dr. Linda—their entire bloody chat history—leaving only the one unread from the Detective.

 _All done,_ she'd sent. _I don't think she did it. Got her prints and DNA for testing. Maybe some new leads too._

 _Oh_? he replies through gritted teeth. _Do tell._

He takes a slow, deep breath. Counts to three. Releases it. Counts to three. Finally forcing himself to do the breathing trick Dr. Linda had taught him. The sweet, pungent scent of ozone fills his nostrils. He fans his wings as far as they'll go. 

The Detective says, _Later, k? Headed home to take that hot bath._

ANSWER HER.

 _Yes,_ he's compelled to type immediately, a spiral of need twisting through him. Apparently, he doesn't have the same freedom not to respond to texted questions as he does spoken ones. But the context of what she's said overrides the sharpest edges of his stress. He smiles a little. 

_:Devil emoji: Enjoy,_ he adds. _Is your vibrator waterproof?_

The simple act of talking to her—of breathing—of faking normalcy—calms him, makes the azure sphere stretched around him seem less like a fish bowl. He flies higher. Well beyond the range of cell towers. Wet wispy cirrus clouds needle his skin. He takes a few more laps, trying to enjoy the frigid air fingering through his flight feathers, the ache and stretch in his back and wing muscles.

He manages some pleasure. 

Some small whorl of happiness in a maelstrom. 

His enjoyment, though, is brittle. 

Much like obsidian glass.

* * *

On a Sunday afternoon, no club like Lux should be open. That doesn't mean the doors are locked, though. Not to the Devil. 

Folding his wings, Lucifer sweeps through the entry like he still owns the place—he does, technically, though the club is leased indefinitely to Patrick for $1 a month. Patrick had been Lucifer's favorite. Patrick had had _aspirations_.

The club seems the same. 

Empty. But the same.

Same furnishings. Same color palette. Same sprawl of stylized lighting. Same bar with the same top shelf. Even the disco ball he'd used for "prom" still hangs above, making slow revolutions as the air circulates. 

It's like walking into a time capsule from his life _before_.

Before.

Before he'd known about panic attacks. Before he'd understood humiliation. Before he'd been enslaved and lost the ability to choose. 

Before …. 

He freezes when he sees the piano. 

_I do not understand the appeal,_ someone had said. _It hurts my ears._

 _He says the noise makes pictures,_ replied another.

_I do not see a picture._

_Maybe if you—_

_Stop with this_ nonsense _, will you?_ Lilith had scolded, her voice echoing through his former halls. _I cannot hear my own—_

No. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, clamping down on the memory, breathing slowly as Dr. Linda instructed. Panic flutters in his belly, a bird debating flight. But he breathes, and counts, and breathes, and counts. The picture dissolves like a dream upon waking, sharp details blurring into ambiguity and then nothing. 

When his limbs stop shaking, he grabs his favorite Laphroaig from the top shelf of the bar. Popping the cork on the untouched bottle, he returns to the piano as the smoky peat scent tickles his nose. 

He doesn't know why he came here. His old life is _gone,_ and tormenting himself with it seems … ill-advised. Particularly now.

But ….

He takes a swig of scotch straight from the bottle, letting the liquid soak his tastebuds. The Laphroaig is considerably more expensive than what the Detective had bought—some twelve-year-old Glenfiddich well beneath his normal price range. Yet the Laphroaig tastes like wood shavings for a hamster cage, and the Glenfiddich had been oaky and full of peat. Decadent and rich. Perhaps his new favorite flavor, other than the $100,000 bottle of Bowmore he'd always kept secured in his penthouse bar. Or … perhaps his mood is so soured, even the Bowmore would taste of sawdust, and good company alone had saved the Glenfiddich.

Her company.

He takes another swig, and then rests his fingertips against smooth white keys. His old piano feels like a jilted lover. Someone he'd betrayed.

Peculiar.

He plinks a few notes, eventually setting into one of his favorite Shostakovich pieces— _Prelude and Fugue No. 4 in E minor_. He does so love Russian composers for their broodiness. Venting his anxiety and angst and nostalgia and _yearning_ into the tune, he's swept away.

The keys transform into those of another piano.

A Steinway Model D that had once made his Hell a hopeful place.

 _This … is music_ , he'd told someone—Squee?—long ago.

The club blurs.

He plays, caught in the throng of things forgotten.

* * *

_Did_ you _do that? Did_ you _unmake it?_

"… Lucifer?" an awed male voice asks. "Lucifer?"

Lucifer drifts from his fugue, his eyes wet, his throat aching, his chest a sucking void of anguish, but he doesn't remember why. His fingers rest against cold keys. He has no idea how long he's been sitting here, crying instead of playing. 

"Lucifer?"

Patrick stands at the foot of the piano, looking across the shining black hood like he's seen a ghost. " _Lucifer_?"

"Yes, _what_?" Lucifer says, trying not to scowl or snap. 

"You okay, man?"

He scrubs furiously at his grief with the backs of his hands. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Just …."

"It's the bloody music," Lucifer grumbles, gesturing dismissively at him. "Memories." _Pictures_.

"Ah." The tattoos on Patrick's biceps bulge as he leans against the piano, smudging the spotless, lacquered wood. "Are you … back?"

Lucifer looks down at himself before returning Patrick's gaze. "Clearly."

"I meant—"

"I am not an idiot; I know what you meant." Lucifer reaches for the bottle to take another gulp. "No, I am not _back_ , as you say. I've genuinely no idea"—no control over—"what my future will be, though I suspect all roads lead to Hell." All roads wrap around him like a noose.

Patrick's dark hair and complexion enhance his dour expression. "Rough gig, man. Sorry."

"As am I."

"We've missed you."

"Of course you have. What's not to miss?"

"Yeah. This place just isn't the same anymore. Hail, Satan." He sounds … _genuine_.

"Yes, well." Lucifer looks at his lap, not quite sure what to say. "May I stay a while? I find myself needing somewhere to be that isn't the Detective's, and here is"—his heart twinges—"the closest thing to mine I can think of."

"Hey, man," Patrick says, stepping around the edge of the piano, though he wisely stops when the bubble between them collapses to a single stride. "It's absolutely yours if you still want it."

So much for _ambitions_.

"The point is _I cannot have it_ ," Lucifer snaps, and then he sighs, taking another sip from the bottle. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me," Patrick counters. "We're here for you if you need us, you know. Always have been. Lux staff's got your back."

"No, thank you. May I stay, or not?"

Patrick chews on his answer before deciding, "We open at 7. You wanna stay longer than that, lemme know, and I'll cancel our entertainment for the night."

"Yes, I—" _Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer,_ he hears, an urgent, aroused chant, vibrating inside his skull, overriding every available thought. _Did you hear me say your name? Does this count as prayer?_

ANSWER HER. Need spirals through him like a corkscrew rocket. Apparently, his freedom not to answer spoken questions doesn't extend to prayed ones either. 

"Pardon me, Patrick," he says tightly as he fumbles for the Detective's phone, "I seem to be receiving a 'call.'"

"Right. Sure. I'll be down in the office if you need me."

"Yes, yes, pretend as though I'm not here," Lucifer says, waving Patrick away. ANSWER HER. Not writhing on the bench is a struggle. What the bloody hell is her work num—wait, she'd texted earlier. He navigates there, quickly typing, _Yes. Why?_

As soon as her read receipt shows up, his need dissipates as rapidly as it had arrived, the promise of reward evaporating with it. He can't stop the soft, dissatisfied moan rippling in his throat as he wilts against the piano, trying to regain his— 

_Can I just, like, blanket tell you not to listen to my prayers for the next … twenty—errr, thirty—minutes?_ _Please?_

ANSWER HER.

 _Detective!_ he types.Like she'd whipped the word from him, but it's not enough. Not _enough._ ANSWER HER. ANSWER HER. _Yes, of course,_ he adds, satisfying the compulsion. And then, before he can think better, _Why not tell me never?_

A pause.

The read receipt appears.

The overriding desperation to please her leaves him. Leaves him empty. Throbbing without impetus. He pants softly in the silence, his blood still pumping hotly, heartbeat by heartbeat, into his groin, his overtaxed body behind the curve a smidge. He cups himself through his pants. He's half hard, getting harder. His shirt rubbing his nipples hurts. The Detective lingers in his mind's eye, naked, stroking herself. Bloody Hell. Bloody _Hell_. Oh, he didn't want to feel anymore like he'd felt earlier this week. Wound up. Overwrought with futile fantasies. He—

Wait. 

Oh, it's not futile.

Not anymore. She'd assured it.

He clutches the phone. 

He could use this bloody compulsion to please himself now, if he wanted, and he does.

Oh, how he does.

He grins.

 _Do you … not like me praying to you?_ she asks.

ANSWER HER.

 _I love it_ , he types quickly, spurred. Not … _precisely_ the words he would have chosen, but close enough for this context. Of his own volition, he adds, _You simply caught me by surprise._

For a moment, she doesn't reply, seconds ticking down, his arousal ticking up, until, _Color?_

ANSWER HER. Compulsion and desire intersect. _Green,_ he types _._

_You're sure?_

ANSWER HER. _Quite,_ he's forced to say.He happily continues, _Thirty minutes isn't nearly enough time for you to relax. Come now, be kind to yourself._

She doesn't reply immediately—he anticipates the moment she will, his nerves tingling to the tips of his fingers and toes. His body hums. His groin feels heavy. He shifts on the bench, trying to adjust, but nothing is comfortable anymore. 

Reframing, indeed. This kind, he likes.

What would have been torture has become delightful edging by his partner. Edging with a guaranteed ending: satisfaction. Something he can do with her, alongside her, while she satisfies herself, far away and yet very close. Another choice. His choice.

 _If I tell you not to listen_ , she asks, her prayer filling his skull to the brim, _will you still hear me?_

ANSWER HER. He makes a grab for the music rack, every muscle igniting at once. The last of his panic, his grief, his uncertainty—his stifling constriction—melts blissfully away, washed out by a fresh tidal wave of arousal. Arousal not just to answer the bloody question, but for _her_. To please her. His Detective. 

A choice.

He grimaces, baring his teeth as he rides the wave, laughing in a goading sort of way. He lets the explosion of desire burn, almost playing chicken with it. His erection rubs against the seams of his zipper. Heat unfurls across his skin, an unchecked conflagration burning out his mind. He drags a palm down his lapel, struggling not to tear at it. 

The desire builds until he quivers, until he can't hold still, until he can't quite remember what he's doing beyond trying to wait longer. ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER, _ANSWER HER,_ the compulsion sings, screams. 

_Lucifer?_ she prods, and his will shatters.

 _No idea,_ he types at last. _Never tried it before. :Devil emoji:_ Not enough. Delicious frustration makes him tremble. YOU CAN'T NOT KNOW. UNACCEPTABLE. FIND OUT. ANSWER HER. He wants to rip off his suit and rub one out right here. _Why not pretend I can't and have a good time regardless? :Devil emoji:_

 _Because it's_ embarrassing _,_ she prays.

He forces himself to his feet, lurching for the elevator. In his penthouse, which is still his—never to be leased or sold, he'd told Simon—he'll have no risk of Patrick bumbling in and asking to join, which he has done on occasion. 

_Why is it embarrassing?_ Lucifer types as the door dings and trundles slowly open. _Everybody fantasizes_. ANSWER HER. ANSWER HER. He's fantasizing right bloody now, about all the naughty things she'll do to him. _I've heard it all before anyway. I'm older than time._

He keeps babbling at her as the elevator car ascends.

* * *

He's too preoccupied to be shocked by the sight of his old life, stripped bare. His furniture is gone. His curtains are gone. Nothing hangs on the walls. His bar is empty. What few knickknacks he'd ordered kept, along with his vast library, Simon had surely put in storage for him. 

ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER, Lucifer's still compelled, several questions he hadn't answered completely, rolling along at a nice boil. YOU CAN'T NOT KNOW. UNACCEPTABLE. FIND OUT. ANSWER HER.

He strips off his coat and vest as he walks, not caring where they land. He loses his shirt in the hallway next to his former bedroom. His former master bathroom is empty of toiletries, doesn't even have towels in it. Only empty echoing tile and marble and glass—all immaculate—greet him when he enters. 

She asks him a few more questions, winding him up as far as he'll go before she tells him not to listen anymore. He steps—stumbles—out of his pants, and walks naked into the shower with the phone. She prays something else to him, but he's lost the ability to comprehend it—her words cease being a language he knows, and then fade altogether, until she's nothing but another bee, buzzing at one of the distant flowers in his infinite mental garden, like all humans. Another moment, and he can't remember how he would focus on her if he wanted. The ability's been stripped from him. 

Disappointing. 

He'd rather hoped, with her tacit permission, he'd get to "watch" from afar.

Ah well. 

At least, now he knows. He found out for her. Still, ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER remains, his phone sultry and bright—an odd, force-fed incongruity—in his mind's eye. He returns his attention to her, choosing his Detective, also there, smiling seductively.

Bracing himself against the tile wall with his elbow, forearm, and one splayed hand, he finally touches himself with the other. Strokes. Teases. Or … no. He makes a face.

No, that won't do. 

No lube. 

While he may be invulnerable to chafing, a dry palm still isn't all that pleasant. He heads back into the main part of the bathroom, pawing through all the empty drawers and cabinets. Surely, Simon hadn't disposed of all the lube. Surely, he—fuck, he absolutely bloody had.

No matter. Lucifer will get his blissful finish, even without physical stimulation. The need to ANSWER HER, ANSWER HERlingers, burning, building, bubbling. 

Stepping back into the shower stall, he waits, panting, sliding to the cold ground with his back to the marble divider. The gelid tile contrasts with the fire igniting in his veins, lacing through all of his sinews. Suddenly, she's behind him, cradling him. Her palm slides over his shoulder, his pectoral, toiling at his nipple before pausing over his belly. _I love you,_ she murmurs against his ear. _I choose you._

"Oh, yes," he exults. "Oh—mmph."

She cups a hand over his mouth, silencing him. "I didn't tell you you could speak."

He presses into her touch.

"Don't come until I tell you."

He crosses his wrists, holding them above his head like her phantom version will tie him up as surely as the solid one could. She doesn't, of course, but he can pretend. 

ANSWER HER. He needs to ANSWER— 

"Don't come yet," she warns.

He won't. He _won_ ' _t._ An act of will. _His_ will. 

The thought ends in a moan he can't quite strangle. "Detective—"

"I thought I told you not to talk," she scolds with a gentle smile, and he shuts his mouth. 

ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER. 

He won't—he wants this fantasy to last as long as possible. Breaths rasping, desperate, he collapses onto all fours, straddling the edge between pleasure and pain. He kisses her feet, fighting not to thrust his hips at nothing. She nudges him with her knee, repositioning him onto his back, spread-eagle, and she strokes his hair while she rides him. Her body, warm and wet and _home_ , constricts him.

"I love you," she repeats. "I choose you." His enduring fantasy. 

She watches him with a loving expression as he falls apart beneath her. 

"You're mine," she asserts, and, oh, how he agrees.

Until his mind frays. Until he starts to forget what the phone by his hip means, beyond a vehicle to fulfill her command—ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER. His fingers clench. The conflagration consumes him.

She smiles sweetly. "Now, come."

He hits play on the last recording listed on the phone.

"Lucifer, you're so good," his real Detective says, an echo, completing him. JOB WELL DONE.

He arches backward, his spine extending as he peaks. He almost chokes with the intensity.

"You're such a good Devil."

JOB WELL DONE. He peaks again, scrabbling at the cold, tile floor, wishing he had someone real to hold, or to hold him while he falls. 

"You did such a good job. Praise Satan. That guy is the best."

WELL DONE, WELL DONE, WELL DONE. He peaks, and he peaks, and he peaks, stuck, floating. The prison of ecstasy traps him for a too short moment, perfect in its pain. Then the pressure inside him releases. He feels a hot, pulsing surge within. His lower body kicks forward, beyond his control, and he spurts onto his belly, his breaths heaving as he thinks of her. Only her.

JOB. WELL. DONE.

He tries to imagine she's really there. 

That he's giving parts of himself to her in a moment of intimacy.

But the tile is cold against his back. The recording stops. And he eventually has no more of himself to give. The spasms subside.

He curls into a semi-fetal position, his body growing heavy with lassitude and gravity. 

Good. It was good. He's sated. It was _fun_. Novel. Empowering in a time of powerlessness. But ….

"Not perfect," he says forlornly to no one.

He wants _her_. 

She's the choice he would make if he could.

If he were allowed.

If he were _free_.

No solitary play will substitute.

* * *

Pulling himself together again is … a process. 

He spends too long, wandering naked through his empty shell of a former home, trying not to picture all the things that are gone. He doesn't return to the Detective until the child is already asleep. Until a single lamp remains alight in the apartment—the one by her bed, while she reads. He showers and changes quickly.

"Hey," she says softly, smiling, when he crosses over the threshold of her bedroom. "Enjoy your … um. Your alone time?"

"Yes." And no. And _yes._ And …. 

"Good. That's … that's good."

He sits on the edge of her bed. _His_ side, as she's confirmed. "I heard nothing after you instructed me not to listen," he tells her with a wink. "Your naughty little secrets are safe."

Her face makes a journey from wondering to certainty. "There was … there was pegging," she admits, blushing. "I pegged you. And some other stuff."

"Oh, _really_?" he purrs, grinning.

"I promise I'll tell you more when we can actually do something about it."

"How profound, your optimism." He doesn't mean to be snarky. He doesn't. But— 

She sets her book aside. "Lucifer, are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Linda called me."

"Ah." An ache blooms behind his sternum. In his skull. He rubs his eyes. "Say, what do you humans use for headaches?" He doubts she's acquired weed.

She reaches into her nightstand, withdrawing a little white bottle that jingles as she offers it to him. "You can talk to me, yeah?" 

The label reads: acetaminophen. "Yes, I know. How many?"

"Uh … two for a human."

He pops ten into his mouth, swallowing them dry, and then pulls back the bedclothes. "What?" he says. She's gaping at him.

"That's really bad for your liver."

"My liver's survived enough scotch to fill the Pacific."

She opens her mouth. Closes it.

"May I sleep here again?" he asks.

"You can always sleep here. Like I said, it's your side."

Relaxing, he slides in. Tugs the covers over his body. He's tired, and he's sore, and he's spent. "I thought of you domming for me," he admits. "We shagged. I wish it were real."

She doesn't ask him what he means. Won't say, _Me, too_. Instead, the covers rustle, and her fingers find his, entwining.

"Have you ever felt so constricted for so long," he inquires softly, "it hurts to breathe when you're finally free?" 

Freer, at least.

Her hand wanders to his wrist, the skin of her palm rasping idly against his forearm. "Like when handcuffs are too tight?" she asks. "That antsy painful tingling when circulation restores itself?"

"I suppose? I've never experienced such a thing." Not that he remembers anyway.

"Is that how you feel right now?" she asks gently. "Like it hurts to breathe?"

He's no bloody idea how he feels. 

"Detective, may I …?" And then he thinks better of asking. "Never mind. It's not important."

She turns off the lamp, leaving only the orange-y high-pressure sodium lights on the street outlining her face. Pulling the covers up, she lies on her side, facing him, her nose inches from his. 

"May you what?" she murmurs. And then she grins. "Come on, I told you mine."

"Yes, you were quite brave." He smiles. "You're always brave. One of the many things I love about you."

Her grin crinkles the edges of her eyes. Still, she persists, "Lucifer, may you what?"

Her tenacity is another thing he loves. Usually. With a suffering sigh, he asks, "Detective, may I hold you? Will you permit me _that,_ at least?" 

She searches his face in the darkness. Then she inches closer, the pillow and blankets rustling, until her forehead bumps into his. "I'd like that, if you want."

He does. Very much. 

"Turn over, will you?" he says. "Can't very well spoon face to face."

"Yeah. Face to face is definitely forking, and we can't have that."

A small, shocked syllable that could be a laugh pops loose from his lips. " _Detective_ , was that delightfully devilish innuendo intended?"

"Who, _me_?" She flops onto her other side, facing away from him as requested. Her top shoulder and torso quiver. "Would I do that?" Even her words quaver a bit.

"You're _laughing_ ," he marvels as he wraps his arm over her ribcage, pulling her close, pressing his nose against her hair. She fits against him like she's his lost piece. "I think you took a leaf from my book."

Her snicker is an audible splutter that makes her shake harder. Until she eventually gasps, "Couldn't beat him off, so I joined him?"

A guffaw almost cracks his body in two. "Ten out of ten, Detective!"

"Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all night."

"Indeed." He kisses her hair. She smells faintly floral, like her conditioner. He strokes her arm, relishing the heat of her body, close to his. His perfect denouement, if slightly delayed. "I quite needed this after today."

"Me, too," she whispers back at him. 

They lie quietly for a moment. 

She twines her fingers with his again, squeezing his hand. They play a gentle push and pull, hands rustling against the sheets as they tangle. "Lucifer … have you thought about … _not_ returning to Hell after this?" she murmurs, stroking his thumb. "Obviously, there's Amenadiel and Azrael to worry about. But … after? So you can be with me? And everybody?"

His family. 

"I rather think Bakasura's body count proved my staying isn't an option," he says.

"What if you split time between here and there?" she asks.

"The time differential makes that difficult. When the Devil's away, the demons will play."

"They behaved for years."

He kisses her neck through her hair. "Did they?"

"What do you mean?"

"Detective, I never searched for them—I didn't care." He'd been so bloody foolish. "For all I know, hundreds escaped and ran rampant."

"Oh."

He pulls her closer, her body a line of heat against his. "Perhaps you should ask John, should we ever find him."

"Ask him what?"

"Precisely how many demons he exorcised while I was on _vacation_ ," Lucifer says darkly.

She doesn't reply, and her hands have stilled. His chest aches again. "Detective, I'm sorry. I wish I could stay if I were released. I wish a lot of things."

"I know."

He pulls his fingers through her hair, an idle, repetitive motion. 

"Detective?"

"Yeah?"

"If … this compulsion is never resolve—"

"It will be."

"But if it isn't." She sighs, like she doesn't want to contemplate the possibility. Still, he presses onward, "Can you see any version of our future in which the shagging is real?"

Her fingers tighten around his, but she doesn't speak.

"I understand you're uncomfortable with the idea of coupling in the present context," he rushes to add. "Truly, I do, and I'm not intending to push: I realize your answer might be no. I'm simply inquiring after your feelings should the context slightly—"

"Yes."

His heart jumps into his throat. "Yes?"

She pulls his hand past her breasts, to her lips. Twin lines of warmth press into the back of his palm and linger. "I think," she says slowly, softly against his skin, "if I knew for sure the situation weren't imminently resolvable—if I _knew_ this was gonna be a long haul instead of a sprint—I could … maybe adjust my stance a little, provided we take some serious precautions and approach things with due gravity."

He snorts, affection burbling up like a warm geyser. "How very"—he kisses her hair—" _very_ type A." 

"You love me for it," she counters.

"I do." 

His eyelids dip. Her breaths are a soft, rushing murmur against his ears, her heartbeat a close, reliable thump-thump, thump-thump. 

He listens, swept away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's interested, Patrick the Bartender in this chapter is a riff (with permission!) off Liannabob's version in [Patrick the Bartender Is Not Paid Enough for This Shit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18745153). If you need a good laugh right now, give it a read :)
> 
> If you'd like to hear the Shostakovich song Lucifer was playing, you can find it [here](https://open.spotify.com/track/5JO2mwPdtPL26tDyn92Jda?si=G8mNHdJvQpOMm7v-Mc4UNg).


	32. "things that aren't fixable"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all! I hope everybody had a lovely holiday. Thanks so much to people who take the time to leave feedback :)

The back burners on her stove still work. Her freezer is divine toast, but the fridge still fridges, so she has milk and eggs. Which means, despite having her formerly pristine kitchen smote by an archangel, she's able to make chocolate-chip pancakes. Well, chocolate-lump pancakes. The chips got melted. Probably during the smiting.

Since her new dinette set hasn't yet arrived, they eat in the living room, crouched around the coffee table. Lucifer seems … brittle. Prone to staring blankly, lapsing into silence. He'd had a fitful night again, tossing and turning, muttering, waking petrified, and, now, instead of eating, he nudges lumps of chocolate across his syrup-glazed plate. 

"Is your bag for Dad's all packed?" Chloe asks the oppressive quiet.

Trixie looks up from her book, which is perched beside her dish, and offers a suffering, "Yes, Mom." 

"Oh, is Daniel returned, then?" says Lucifer distantly.

"I hope so," Chloe replies, picking up her phone. Dan hasn't said anything since his mysterious call Saturday morning. She's texted him a few times, called a few more, even e-mailed, but he's either incommunicado or ignoring her. Ella, too. "He's supposed to pick up Trixie from school today, and I've heard nothing to indicate that's not happening." 

"You don't sound terribly convinced."

"He was really weird on the phone. Ella was even weirder."

Lucifer's brow furrows. "Ms. Lopez is with Daniel?"

"I think so." 

"How peculiar," says Lucifer without sounding terribly interested. And then he returns to dragging his fork around his plate, the depth and presence in his expression slowly washing awa—

"Lucifer, are cyclopses real?" asks Trixie. 

"Hmm?"

"Cyclopses. Are they real?"

He reanimates, peering at her book. "What in Dad's name are you reading?"

She shows him the cover.

" _The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy_ ," he slowly reads aloud. He snatches the book, flipping through the pages so fast it's hard to believe he's actually reading. "Well, this is a terrible translation—it's _prose_." He scoffs, pausing on a sketch of Achilles flailing with an arrow stuck in his heel. " _Pictures?_ The Epic Cycle had no _pictures._ Achilles doesn't even die in surviving texts."

"It's a kids' version," Chloe says. 

"And I'm a kid," adds Trixie, scrunching her nose. "And it's due Friday."

Lucifer rolls his eyes, returning the book to her. "Ask me someday to recite the original. It's far better than this drivel." 

"You know the whole thing?" asks Trixie. "Isn't it big?"

"Child, I knew Homer." He makes a face. "Or, well, I knew the amalgamation of poets and bards you lot refer to as Homer. Some of them are in Hell, actually, still reciting the whole blasted thing for anyone who will listen."

Trixie eyes him silently in calculation. 

"What?" he says.

"Can you come to my class for show-and-tell? It's career day next week."

Chloe frowns. "I didn't know it was career day."

"His job is _cool_ ," Trixie says. As if that's enough explanation.

"More stiflingly hot than cool," replies Lucifer. He cocks his head. "Actually, I think I'm technically unemployed."

"And mine isn't?" asks Chloe. "I catch the bad guys!"

"Yes, but you have central air while you do it," quips Lucifer. "Could slavery be considered a career? Then again, I suppose the King of Hell doesn't get paid eith—"

"You, be quiet," she huffs. 

He blows out a breath.

"You absolutely cannot go to her show-and-tell," she continues. Talk about a recipe for disaster. The PTA would _murder_ her, assuming they didn't all break their necks tripping over themselves to flirt with him. "Just … just … no." She returns her attention to Trixie. "Did you ask Dad instead of me? Why haven't I heard about this?"

"I didn't ask _anybody_ ," Trixie says, her eyes widening like she got caught stealing cake.

"But why?"

"Rory's dad is a cop, and he's already coming."

"Rory's dad is a _mall cop_."

Trixie shrugs, suddenly disengaged. "I dunno."

Chloe looks to Lucifer for support, but he doesn't speak. 

With a aggravated-sounding sigh, he absconds from the room, leaving his plate and fork and barely touched chocolate-lump pancake behind. Only after he's thumped loudly up the steps does she realize she got distracted and bossed him around. Again. 

"Shit," she says, rubbing her tired eyes. " _Shit_."

"Mom?" says Trixie, sounding concerned.

"Nothing," Chloe says, trying to keep her voice from cracking. The more comfortable she gets—the more she lets down her guard—the harder this is becoming. "Read your book."

* * *

She walks in on him as he's playing back the command giving him freedom-ish of speech. He sits on the edge of his bed in his room, staring at the iPad like it's a ring buoy—the only salvation between him and death at sea. She sits beside him, the mattress sinking, and waits for the recording to finish.

"Well, that's fixed, I suppose," he says pointedly, putting the iPad by his hip.

"I'm sorry," she says. "Lucifer, I'm _sorry_."

"No permanent harm done."

"But I imagine it still hurts. And I'm sure it's frustrating."

He doesn't argue.

She rests her head against his shoulder. "How did that one break again? Do you know? I thought that command was pretty unassailable, but I've broken it twice."

"You've given me no protection from being told to stop talking."

"What?"

"When you tell me to shut up, whether or not you're joking, it has _weight,_ Detective."

"Why didn't you say something sooner?"

He arches an incredulous eyebrow at her. Okay. Point. They've had plenty of bigger things to worry about. 

She reaches across his lap and grabs the iPad resting on the bedspread. Navigating to the notes where all the commands are written, she reads what she wrote.

Sure enough.

A glaring omission, in retrospect.

"Want me to fix it?" she asks him. 

He rubs his eyes tiredly. "Please."

She types a small addition, smudging the screen. "Would that work, you think?"

"Try it, and see."

"Lucifer, I want you to be able to speak or not speak whenever you would choose to, and I always want that more than I want you to respond to my desire for knowledge, or my desire to hear you talk, or my desire to hear you say"—she looks him in the eye, squeezing his arm—" _or not say"—_ his lip twitches—"specific things."

He closes his eyes.

"Can you talk, still?"

"Yes."

"Well," she tries, feeling bad, now, just for testing out the words, "shut up?" 

"No," he says immediately, biting into the syllable like it's prime cut cooked to perfection, "I will not."

"Oh, _good_ ," she replies, sagging.

He expels a gust of air that might be a laugh. "Something I never thought you'd say."

"First time for everything."

"Indeed." He kisses her temple.

"Did I break anything else?"

"Not that I've discovered."

"Good," she says again, the word soft. 

She deletes the old recording, replacing it with an updated version. When she's finished she gives back the device. He clutches it like he's trying with all his might not to crush it, despite his depth of feeling. His only real freedom. In his hand. Thirty seconds pass before, with a fortifying breath, he relegates the iPad to the nightstand. 

"Okay?" she prods.

"Yes."

The sliver of anguish in his expression makes her heart twist. "Lucifer, I'm here, yeah?"

" _Yes_ ," he repeats emphatically. "You are."

She gets the distinct impression she's missing something. Some … subtext. But if he doesn't want to talk, what can she do?

He folds his hands beside her, fingers trembling as he prays.

"Anything?" she asks softly when he's finished.

"Nothing." His glum tone tugs her heartstrings. 

She hugs him, careful to pause, to telegraph first. He doesn't duck away. Seems to relax in her arms, even. One small fire put out, at least. Too bad there's a zillion more still ablaze, burning their world to ash.

* * *

The bullpen is quiet. Most perps don't like Monday mornings any more than cops, of whom eight-to-fivers are still drifting in at odd intervals. Beat cops are already out, having done a shift change closer to dawn. 

"So, our victim, Alastor Blackthorn, goes to Dominus on Friday night to play with his brand new custom-built Kali's Teeth," Chloe says. 

"Which he obtained at Rian Flannery's," says Lucifer.

"Right." 

They stand in front of a whiteboard, which they'd rolled from one of the conference rooms to Chloe's desk. Scrawled notes stinking of dry-erase ink, blown-up driver's-license photos, and a smattering of business cards, all arrayed in a precise timeline, are spread across the surface. Chloe points to a black card embossed with a triskelion. 

"At Dominus," she continues, tapping the card with her index finger, "Alastor meets Piper. They hit it off and go back to his place for a scene, him subbing, her domming. They arrive around 8:30 p.m. They're having a good time. The clothes are coming off. Maybe he's restrained. The phone rings. Piper allows him to answer. It's an unidentified woman. She's upset. Alastor leaves in response—"

"Ix-nay on the scene," interjects Lucifer.

"And Piper goes home. Right." Chloe takes a breath. "Alastor texts Piper at 9:13 p.m. He had fun and was sorry to cut things short. Then we have a big black hole"—she winces at the empty expanse in the middle of the board—"until 3:47 a.m. Tuesday, when Ms. Cade called in a noise complaint regarding the neighborhood's serial Problem Property." 

"But based on the de-gloved soul we found last Thursday," Lucifer says, "we can speculate Mr. Blackthorn died Saturday night, or early Sunday morning."

"From," Chloe says, "barring anything unexpected in the final autopsy report"—which won't come for weeks yet—"internal bleeding due to blunt-force trauma." She scrutinizes the board. "Oh, and at some point he suffered a concussion that may or may not be related."

"But probably is," finishes Lucifer.

"Yeah. Probably."

She sighs, trying not to get frustrated when she sees only dead ends, all manufactured by backlogs, red tape, and the limitations of technology. Piper's prints and DNA, even expedited, won't be back until tomorrow. Who knew when Derek would go through USC-campus-video feeds or Mr. Blackthorn's e-mails. The iPad needs a miracle to be useful. And, of course, there's Mr. Blackthorn's phone number. Which she now has and can subpoena records for. But that's still a bunch of paperwork, a judge's signature, and a service provider's—AT&T's in this case—inevitably obstinate legal department to wade through. 

"Perhaps the blonde woman he was seen arguing with should be our next avenue of investigation?" Lucifer asks.

"I agree, but until we get some results back," Chloe says, "it's not a road we can travel." 

But that just feels wrong. How can they still be so stuck, even with the new information provided by Piper? Surely, there's something Chloe can pick through right this second. Something that'll make her feel like an actual freaking investigator instead of a waits-for-results-er ….

She turns from the whiteboard and sits at her desk, shuffling through the information she has related to the 1998 fraternity hazing. Information she's already pored over several times: a singular crime report, and a singular news article. There's no opportunity she's aware of—the families don't live here; Derek had placed the both of them states away.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Lucifer says.

"Not sure what my thoughts even are," Chloe grumbles. She shoves the papers at him. "Do you see something I don't?"

"Detective, I've looked at these several times already."

"I know, but … look again? Closer?"

The papers crinkle as he takes them. He flips through the crime report, skimming it in seconds, and focuses on the news article instead. Dark, stressed lines etch into his forehead as he peers more and more intently.

"What?" she asks. "Anything?"

"The pictures aren't very good, are they?"

"Yeah, I think that printer needs more toner. Good luck finding some." The photos are fluff—old family portraits, now way out of date. Still, he hadn't mentioned the bad pictures before. "Why are you suddenly noticing that?"

"I am not _suddenly_ noticing it," he says with an affronted sniff. "I'm suddenly caring enough to mention it."

"Why?"

"Did you not just command me to look closer? Clearly, you want me to say somethingilluminating, and this is all I can offer."

And … doesn't that just fucking suck all the wind out of her sails. She pinches the bridge of her nose. "I didn't mean to _make_ you do it. Fuck, I'm awful at this today." Maybe _every_ day, and he just doesn't usually protest. That's a terrifying thought.

His hand cups her shoulder. Squeezes. "Really, Detective. It's all right. No harm done with such a small ask." 

"Still, I—"

"The printout is quite bad. Perhaps, we should focus on that, rather than things that aren't fixable?" _For the sake of my bloody fraying sanity,_ he doesn't add.

"You're right," she says, feeling helpless again. "You're right."

"Thank you."

Maybe they're _both_ going insane.

She notes the source listed on the bottom of the page and navigates there on her machine instead. The big pictures load bar by bar, changing from blurry to sharp as her old computer strains. 

"There," she says. 

"Who is that?" Lucifer says, pointing at the top left picture in the spread. 

A family photo of five. Two adults and three children, all dark-haired like ravens. Lucifer's index finger brushes the face of the child on the left. 

"November 1998," Chloe reads the caption, "Robertson Family Thanksgiving. Back row, left to right: Mary, 45, and Andy, 47; Front row, left to right: Nicky, 12, Sarah, 17, and Marcel, 18." Marcel was one of the two hazing victims. "So, that's Nicky, I guess."

"Nicky Robertson."

"Yeah." Chloe frowns at him. "Why?"

Lucifer's eyes narrow. "I feel as though I've met her before."

"She's only twelve there. Where would you have met her?"

Lucifer's gaze intensifies. He leans an inch closer, close enough for his vanilla scent to waft against her nose. She resists the urge to lean closer, to inhale and forget the world, instead focusing on the photo. Nicky Robertson is smiling in the picture, though the smile doesn't reach her eyes—courtesy of forced holiday photos, probably. Her dark hair is wavy and wispy, shoulder length, and she's wearing a blouse that seems white in the grayscale. She doesn't quite seem to have hit that growth spurt brought by puberty, so her face is cherubic, still projecting more childlike features than encroaching adulthood. There's no real telling how she will have ended up by now, in 2019, but … the image in Chloe's head is very Jennifer Garner.

Lucifer leans back. "I'm not certain where I've seen her."

"Not in …." Chloe hunkers in her seat before whispering, "Not in Hell, right?"

"Well, I should hope not," he scoffs. 

" _Can_ kids go to Hell?" 

"If they're naughty, yes."

"That's sad."

He snorts. "Clearly, you've not met the kind of child who can end up in Hell."

Maybe that's why he's so weird about kids. The only kids he's ever spent time with are literally guilt-twisted hellions or empathy voids. "It's sad your dad designed the world so it's even _possible_ for a kid to be that messed up," she says.

Lucifer's gaze turns stony. "There are quite a lot of things Dad didn't design all that well."

This whole fucking situation comes to mind. Magic allowing for his total enslavement. Hell in general. Murder. Really, she shouldn't have a job.

Chloe pulls up the database and does a quick search for Nicole Robertson, born circa 1986 in Virginia. Tons of hits pop up. Birth records, marriage records, divorce records, deeds, civil proceedings, traffic citations, news articles, every category under the sun. Groaning, Chloe rests her chin on her fist. Nicole was apparently a popular name back then—her surname being Robertson makes the search even worse. At least, Robertson is better than Smith. Might as well take her gun and shoot the computer if it were Smith. 

"Okay," she says, massaging her temples. She _had_ wanted to investigate instead of wait. It's her own damned fault for tempting fate. "Okay, first thing's first; I'm writing the subpoena for AT&T. Just to get that out of the way."

"Well, I can do that," Lucifer says, "if you show me an example."

"You … can?"

"I'm the Devil, darling. I know how to write a bomb-proof contract."

"A subpoena isn't a contract," she says.

"Same ridiculous legalese, I'm certain," he replies. "And I know the specifics of the case."

"You don't wanna gallivant with your twenty miles of freedom or something?"

The skin around his eyes twitches. "Had my fill of that, yesterday. Not really in the mood."

The dense volume of subtext he's offering almost crushes her. _Have you ever felt so constricted for so long, it hurts to breathe when you're finally free_ , he'd said. Like … the more liberty he's given, the more he's chafing at his bonds. Maybe twenty miles feels worse to him than fifty feet, or a thousand. Before, he could compartmentalize, and now …. 

Now, he's offering to do paperwork.

Well. He _has_ already shown he's willing to be serious with paperwork when it's necessary. "Okay, deal," she confirms, wishing there were more she could do for him. His lips flatten. He turns to face the steps. "Let me get you a template. I have—what?"

She follows his gaze, and then she hears it, too. A commotion. Cursing.

"Ow!" A man. "Love, my arm doesn't bloody bend that way."

"Shut up before I shut you up," barks Maze. "I'm sick of your whining. Wah, wah, _wah,_ all the way from—"

"Well, I'd hardly call it _whining_ to prefer feeling in my _—ow!_ Were these _necessary_? _"_

The two of them round the corner, Maze behind, the man being frogmarched awkwardly in front, tripping on his tan-colored duster. She shoves him down the steps. He keeps his footing, mostly. 

"Bloody hell!" he snaps, his British-ish accent as prominent as Lucifer's, but less … posh? "Aren't police supposed to have probable cause, or something?"

"I'm not the police."

Maze peers across the bullpen to Chloe's desk. Her smile is feral as she crows, "Hey, guys. Look who I found!" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ready? Here we go!


	33. "reducing the cluster of fuck"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus chapter today since the last one was short. Enjoy :D

Constantine, Chloe assumes.

She wants to be relieved. Wants to shout, _Oh, thank God, we're saved_ , or something, and pull Lucifer into a giant bear hug while they bounce and scream and celebrate. Except Maze is traipsing in with the guy already handcuffed, straight through the middle of the precinct like he's a goddamned perp—he seems about as happy to be here as a perp—and Lucifer is granite beside her. Frigid. Quiet. Still. Moved by epochs, not moments, and betraying nothing that could be construed as hope. He doesn't blink, even as Maze nearly pile drives the man into the front of Chloe's desk.

"Maze, come on," Chloe scolds as several piles of loose paper spill onto the floor with the impact, just as Lucifer adds, "Well, it's about bloody time." 

Maze offers a bland not sorry, "Sorry."

"Luci," the man says warily.

" _Johnny_ ," replies Lucifer.

"Um," Chloe says, baffled, "hi?"

"Call me John," the man says, though he doesn't take his eyes off Lucifer. As described, his hair is honey blond with frosted tips. He's about five foot ten, wearing dark pants, a tan duster, white button-down shirt, and skinny red tie hanging so loosely it looks like a decorative noose. He spares her a glance. "And who might you be?"

"Detective Chloe Decker," she says. "Did Maze actually force you to—" 

"Harm one hair on her head," Lucifer chimes in beside her, his tone deceptively friendly, "directly or indirectly—and I'll rip out your entrails and feed them to you."

" _Lucifer,_ " Chloe says, stunned. 

Lucifer and John stare at each other, Lucifer prim and proper, his fingers gracefully steepled as he sits like a king, even in the rickety spare chair he'd commandeered. "What took you so long?" he says, oozing ennui.

"I came as soon as I was"—John rolls his shoulders, grimacing; Maze steps closer, and his grimace deepens, ending in a grunt—"dragged."

"From Ohio," says Lucifer. 

"Yup," crows Maze. "Nabbed him in Cleveland."

"Maze _forced_ you here?" adds Chloe, incredulous.

"Yeah, handcuffs aren't for show today, love," John snarks, wincing.

"So?" Maze says. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Yes," replies Lucifer.

_No_ , Chloe wants to snap, but she holds her tongue for Lucifer's sake.

"How did Bakasura lead you so far astray?" Lucifer asks. 

"What do you mean, astray?" John says. "Bakasura's not in Cleveland?"

"Bakasura's dead. Caught him in Columbus." A big brash bragging smirk stretches across Lucifer's features. "Took me all of an hour."

"Then something else is happening in Cleveland," John pushes back. "Bit of an infestation problem. Just like the City of Angels."

"Says the roach I can't seem to get rid of. How charm—"

Chloe snaps to her feet, her chair ricocheting backward when her knees hit the edge. Rejoinders cease, and all eyes shift to her. She glances around the precinct. No way this unexpected clash of He-Men isn't getting noticed. Kasinski is already staring not so surreptitiously over the top of his computer screen. To say nothing of the fact Maze seems to have kidnapped a private citizen. In plain fucking sight. 

"Maybe we should go to a conference room," Chloe suggests through gritted teeth.

But nobody budges. "Careful, Detective," Lucifer cautions. "He's more dangerous than he looks." 

"Dangerous how?" 

Instead of answering, Lucifer shifts his attention back to John. "You heard the bit about the entrails, yes?"

Maze licks her lips like a lion staring at fresh mutton. "It's so _hot_ when you do that." 

"No, _no_ ," Chloe says, trying to stay calm, "threatening bodily harm to people who associate with me—people who are presumably here to _help_ us—is _not_ hot. That is the exact opposite of hot." She glares at Maze. "Same with _kidnapping._ " 

"Honestly, I don't know what the bloody fuss is about," John continues. He shifts, twists, makes a face. The cuffs around his wrists flash like neon advertisements: kidnappers were here 2019. "I can't even shake the bird's hand like this. Are handcuffs meant to be cutting off circulation?"

"Yes," says Maze.

" _No_ ," snaps Chloe. Jesus. She jabs her thumb over her shoulder, giving up on diplomacy. "You three. Into the conference room. Now." 

* * *

They proceed like four civil, mature adults, like this is any other Monday mid-morning, and they're here to discuss a case with a CI or something. Except CIs don't usually wear handcuffs or attend interviews under duress. God. 

She flips the sign outside the room from unoccupied to occupied and shuts the door behind her, then systematically closes the blinds one by one, all while demon, warlock, and archangel dumbly watch. As soon as the last sliver of bullpen disappears behind the clack of closing Venetian blinds, she turns to them. 

"You seriously kidnapped him?" Chloe exclaims. "Seriously?"

"He wasn't gonna come if I didn't," says Maze.

"Did you even _try_ explaining why we need him?" 

Maze rummages inside her bomber jacket. A thunk follows a whisper of motion. Chloe looks down to find a phone with a smashed screen resting on the conference table. The device doesn't lie flat—the warped, bubbled surface of the metal is covered in … scorch marks? 

"… What?" says Chloe.

Maze nods at the ruin. "When I tried to _explain_."

Oh. "I guess that would be why you didn't call." 

_You think_? Maze's sharpening incredulity seems to reply.

"I'd have done a lot more if she hadn't surprised me," says John.

"He means run away like a whiny little child," clarifies Maze.

"No shame in running from a bigger bad than me."

Lucifer snorts. "Oh, is that why I'm always seeing your arse?"

"Hey!" Chloe says, and three pairs of eyes swivel her direction again. "Enough!" She shifts her attention to John. "I am so sorry about this." 

"Not to worry." John offers a wry grin and sigh. "Happens more often than you'd think."

Chloe holds out a hand toward Maze, folding her fingers against her palms repeatedly in a beckoning gesture. "Gimme the cuff keys. Now."

"I wouldn't do that," Maze grumbles. She fishes a metal key from her pocket and foists it over.

"Wouldn't do what?" Chloe replies, unlocking him. "Treat him like a human being? Have you even let him use the bathroom?"

"Nope," says John, wincing as he massages his bruised wrists. "But I haven't had a drink since Cleveland, so it hasn't been a problem."

"Jesus, Maze!" 

She's afraid to ask whether they drove or flew. He doesn't seem dehydrated enough—or soiled enough—to have been trapped in a car without water for thirty-plus hours. Though, how Maze would have explained dragging a resisting guy in handcuffs onto a plane … who the fuck knows. 

"I'm so sorry," Chloe repeats. 

"It's all right, love," says John. 

"Let me take you to the—"

"I _really_ wouldn't do that," insists Maze.

"Why not?" Chloe asks. 

"You heard the bit about him running, right?"

"And the bit about him being dangerous?" adds Lucifer.

Chloe bites back a growl. "Guys, we can't force him to—"

"Why not?" asks Maze.

"Yes, why not?" adds Lucifer almost petulantly.

Chloe opens her mouth to retort, but can't think of what to say. Lucifer's acting like he's been replaced by an earlier, more hard-hearted version. The most disaffected, humans-are-purely-for-my-amusement version she's met. And Maze, who's always been Maze, is no help. 

"You're not wanted by police other than Paula Holtman, are you?" Chloe hazards slowly. 

"Technically, no," John says, his eyes gleaming with amusement. 

Which … what the fuck does that mean? 

Lucifer inches closer. 

"Detective," he murmurs against her ear, "really, I would advise extreme caution with this individual."

She glances at John, taking his measure again. He sports a five-o'clock shadow that isn't cultivated, just hopelessly scruffy. His eyes are dark, but warm, unlike Lucifer, who can come off almost reptilian. He isn't beefy like Dan. More svelte—reedy. But he doesn't have the advantage of devilish charisma or supernatural gravitas, so he just seems … average. Affably average. But—

_Oh_.

Maybe that's the point.

She realizes she'd never asked one essential question. She glances at Lucifer, then turns away from Maze and John. Lucifer turns with her, his larger body dwarfing hers. They huddle.

"Is this guy human?" she whispers.

"Yes," Lucifer replies in a low voice. "Very."

Which stumps her again. "Then what's the big deal?" 

"Detective, I …." But he doesn't finish.

"Lucifer, I'm sorry, but unless you can give me more than that," she whispers in return, "your 'history' with this guy doesn't preclude treating him with basic decency." Like a bathroom trip. And some water. And not fucking _kidnapping_ him.

Lucifer's conflicted expression remains, but he says nothing. 

"C'mon, John," she says more loudly, gesturing toward the door, "let me show you where the restrooms are." When John takes a step, Maze moves to follow. Chloe glares over her shoulder. "Don't. Help me." 

"But, Detective," protests Lucifer.

"Don't," she repeats, "help me. Please." 

Maze backs off with a scowl and flops into one of the uncomfortable conference chairs. Lucifer looks actually murderous. But Chloe sticks to her guns, and gently guides John from the room.

* * *

He takes a long, hearty drink at the water fountain, the sounds of his desperate gulping filling the awkwardness for a good forty-five seconds. When he disappears into the men's room, he spends enough time inside that Chloe second guesses herself about ignoring Maze's warning. Maybe he really did rabbit back to Ohio. There isn't another exit she's aware of. But … he's also some kind of magician warlock demon-hunter who gets kidnapped a lot, and she has no idea what that entails. 

She's about to knock on the door when he emerges, his newly ruddy face stippled with remnant pearls of moisture. 

"Thank you, love," he says, stopping to press his back against the doorframe and shimmy against it like he's working through monster-sized cricks.

"I'm really sorry about them," Chloe feels compelled to say again. "Lucifer's … well. Lucifer."

"Don't I know it," says John, rolling his eyes.

"And Maze is a little—"

"Demon?" He cocks his head like he's taking her measure.

"Hah," she laughs, too loud, too forced. Awkward, awkward, awkward. "Yeah."

"Detective." 

"Chloe, please."

"Chloe." His eyes narrow, and then ease again. He seems tired. Far older than his forty-or-so-years face would suggest. "You seem like a nice bird."

"Uh … thanks?"

"Tell me"—he steps closer, putting his hands on her shoulders—"have you made a deal with him?"

"Who?" she says, ducking out of his grip. "Lucifer?"

"Yes. Listen. This is important." He advances again; she backs up. "Do you _owe_ him anything?"

"Like a favor? No …."

"You're sure?" John prods. "He hasn't given you anything on the sly, say?"

"Of course he's given me things." She thumbs the bullet hanging from her neck—she'd borrowed an unbroken chain from another necklace to fix it. "He's my best friend."

John curses under his breath. "Okay. Okay, I can still help you get away. We can figure out the rest later."

"Why would I wanna do that?"

"This is gonna sound ridiculous. I'm aware. But you have to listen to me."

"O … kay?"

"That 'man' in there?" John says, pointing vaguely with air quotes down the hall. Toward Lucifer and Maze. "He may seem charming as all get out; believe me, I've been there, and … been there"—a secret smile threatens to peek from behind his raincloud before he douses it with austerity—"but he's the Devil."

"I know that."

"The actual bloody Devil."

"Yeah, I know," she assures him. 

"When I said that woman was a demon," he continues, changing tacks, "I wasn't using a figure of speech."

"Right." Chloe folds her arms. "And?"

"Oh, _love_ ," he says woefully, "we need to get you out of here."

"What? No."

"Just come with me." He wraps his fingers around her arm like desperate, clinging vines. 

She shakes him off, backing up again. 

"Come with me," he repeats, not getting the message. 

"No."

"While they're not looking. Believe me; you'll thank me later."

"No, I won't. Mr. Constantine—"

"John," he corrects.

"John," she says, "I"—he touches her again—"I said _no_!" And then she puts her foot forward and flips him onto the floor. His back impacts the hard tile with a crunch. 

"Bloody hell," he wheezes, curling onto his side. "This is not my week."

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he's never going to help at this rate. "I'm sorry," she finds herself gushing again. Her ears are burning as she glances wildly around. Nobody's in the hall. Nobody she'll have to explain this to. Other than John himself, that is. "I didn't mean to—"

"I admit," he says, waving her off as he coughs and sputters. "I should have seen that coming the moment Mazikeen followed your lead." Another cough. "Message received. Your funeral, though."

"Please, we just need your help."

"Not bloody interested," he grumbles, lurching to his feet. "I don't play roulette with my soul anymore. Learned that the hard way."

"I swear, he's not like you've heard. He's a good man."

"He's _not_ a man," John retorts. "Sodom and Gomorrah ring a bell? That's more his speed. Heaven doesn't belong on Earth, and neither does Hell. Not that we peons can do a blessed bloody thing about it."

"Right. Right," Chloe says, mind racing. Lucifer's lack of empathy for this guy is at least starting to make sense. "Well, it's interesting you should say that, because he can't leave. And maybe you _can_ do something about it."

"What are you talking about?" 

"You know he left like five, six months ago, right? He went back to Hell. Just like you want."

"Doesn't seem to have been a long trip," he says, unimpressed.

"Right, well, something bad happened," she explains. "We're not sure what. He's been trying to go back again, but he can't. He's … stuck to me."

"Stuck to you?"

"He thinks it's some kind of curse?" 

"Hmm." A flash of intrigue fills John's eyes, incongruent with his noncommittal, "Interesting theory."

"So," she continues, "even if you were like, shoo, Devil, go home, and tried to, I dunno, banish him with some magic ritual thing—is there one of those?"

"Huh?" he says.

She winces inwardly as her brain jets onto a tangent with the ghost of Father Kinley. "A magic ritual thing to banish the Devil. Is there one?"

"Love, he's an archangel," John replies wryly. "There's very little terrestrial magic that would even make a dent in him, let alone force him to leave. Nasty black stuff maybe—the kind that uses human blood by the bucket—but those practitioners died out a long time ago."

"Really?" she says, trying not to sound crushed. "All of them?" 

John considers a moment. "Last one I knew of was Rasputin. Perfect blood source on tap. Worked well for him." 

"Is there a chance you missed a guy named Kinley? A priest? Also … ew." She makes a face.

"Lots of black magic is definitely 'ew,'" John agrees, thinking more. "Witches and warlocks; it's a right small community. Real magic's not something one can learn by accident or without help. And, no, I don't recognize the name."

"So … no on the Devil-banishment spell."

"No."

The pit in her stomach becomes a vast void. She'd really almost poisoned him to death. Really almost murdered him. Lucifer. All of Kinley's assurances the drug wouldn't hurt, that it would just put Lucifer into a deep sleep so they could safely banish him, flare like phosphorous in her mind. God, she'd been so stupid, allowing herself to be used.

"You okay, love?" John says, stopping short of touching her shoulder again.

Nodding, she swallows back the horrible, hurting wave of self-recriminations and grief. She can't fix what she's already done; she can only try to move forward. She can help Lucifer now, when he really fucking needs it. 

"So, no banishing spells, but"—she clears her throat when her voice sounds too thick with guilt—"there are curses?"

"Bit of a different animal," says John. "Will and directed intent, not magic, per se. Doesn't need commensurate physical fuel, just potent emotion. Still no practitioner alive who could even _aspire_ to waylay an archangel, but—" 

"But Lucifer was in Hell," Chloe says, finishing John's thought, feeling like she's sinking. "Where guilty-minded practitioners go when they die."

"And then have infinite time to research new techniques." John nods. "Exactly, love."

Now. Help Lucifer _now_.

She rubs her eyes. "Please," she says, utilizing the geyser of turmoil that had erupted thanks to her thoughts of Kinley, and going for the kill with hopefully grief-smudged eyeliner. "Please, John, will you help us fix this? We don't have anyone else to ask." Truth, zested with a bit of actor flair.

John looks like he wants nothing less as he sizes up the fire exit behind her. But. But. But if she's gauged him accurately, he has a white knight complex a mile wide, and here she stands, the damsel in distress refusing to turn away from Satan. 

"I can't keep you here," she continues, warbling a little. "I wouldn't try, even if I could. I'm very sorry for the rough treatment Maze gave you."

Please, please, _pl_ — 

"If I help," he asks slowly, "will he go back where he belongs?"

_I wish I could stay if I'm released,_ Lucifer had said. _I wish a lot of things._

"Yes," she admits softly despite the ache it brings. "He'll go." 

"I don't believe you."

"Look, the point is, right now, he literally can't." She looks up at him, trying not to bat her eyelashes too obviously. "Don't you at least want to up the odds from zero?"

John laughs unhappily. "Bloody hell, has he been teaching you how to persuade people?"

She offers him an innocent shrug. "Please, help us. Please."

A beat. 

And then, "I can see why he likes you." John sighs, defeated. "Oh, bloody hell, why do I bloody do this to myself?" 

Hook. Line. Sinker. 

_Yes_.

He turns, opposite the exit, toward the conference rooms. 

She smiles, following.

* * *

"Will you bloody well check on—"

"She seems fine."

"Bloody hell, I can hear that much. Will you physically _look_ , please? He may have— _"_

"No way. _You_ do it!"

"Maze, I _can't_ ," he almost hisses. "She _ordered—_ "

The murmured, sibilant sniping ceases when Chloe knocks on the door and then opens it. No signs of the argument that had been occurring remain. Lucifer sits at the head of the table, legs crossed, posture relaxed. Maze perches on the edge closest to him, her arms folded, her right thigh pressed into the side of his chair.

"Hello, darling," Lucifer says, smiling suavely around the curve of Maze's hip. His gaze ticks over her shoulder to John—behind her—and chills slightly. "Got your human essentials taken care of, then?"

John steps around Chloe. "If I help you, will you wipe out my debt?"

"You know I prefer not to think of favors owed as debts," Lucifer replies, eyes narrowing. "Unlike debtors, I might never collect. Probably won't, actually."

"I'm sure that's what you say to all your victims."

What little warmth remains in Lucifer's gaze evaporates, and the strangulating, suffocating presence of something _other_ envelops them. Something powerful. Something _old_. "Tell me," Lucifer says, his eyebrows creeping upward, "how are they victims, those who receive their wildest dreams in exchange for a simple IOU?"

"My soul is _not_ a simple IOU."

"Oh, please, not with this tripe again." Lucifer stands, brushing off the lapels of his sleek suit. "How many times must I tell you, John, I do not. Collect souls. Not yours; not anyone's." He steps around Maze, towering, like he wants to show off how tall he is. How imposing. "If you desire to avoid damnation, might I suggest addressing your rather problematic guilt complex"—he waves his hand in a vague, shooing gesture—"thing? Really, it is such a downer at parties."

"Will you wipe out my debt, or not?" John persists.

"I cannot expunge a 'contract' that does not exist," Lucifer says. "But, yes, by all means, consider your _actual_ IOU in the rearview mirror of this little chat. I'd intended that from the beginning."

"How do I know you're not lying?"

Lucifer grins without pleasure. "Would you like to shake on it?"

"No!" John blurts, skipping back a step, keeping the bubble of space between them wider than an arm's length. He takes a breath, swallowing, like he's scared. Like he's terrified to even touch Lucifer, lest he be corrupted. "No, that's fine."

Chloe shakes her head. This is insane. This is—

"What first?" says Lucifer.

"Strip," replies John.

"Why, John, I didn't think you were still interested."

"I'm _not_ , you arse!" snaps John. "But I can't bloody see black magic through a black suit, now, can I?" 

"Very well, then. Everything?"

"Please." 

Chloe jolts to her senses as Lucifer's shrugging out of his suit jacket. "Wait. Wait."

He stops with a clipped little sigh.

"I mean, don't wait if you don't want"—he resumes, hanging his jacket on the back of the nearest chair—"but what the hell are you doing?"

"Stripping, why?" says Lucifer blandly. 

"Um … _why_ sounds like the right question, yeah." 

"Can't make a diagnosis without a clear field of view," explains John.

"But—"

"It's not as though he hasn't seen me before," Lucifer says. 

"That's not the fucking problem!" she exclaims.

"You can turn around if it bothers you, of course." Lucifer makes a little spinning gesture with his index and middle fingers.

"But _here_? In the precinct? In the _conference room_?" 

"Why _not_ here?" Lucifer asks. "I'm here." He inclines his head toward John. "He's here." He offers a Gallic shrug to no one. "We're all bloody _here_. And I doubt he'll stay for long now that you've un-cuffed him."

"That's quite true," says John helpfully. His gaze shifts to her. "Say, have you got salt?"

What. "Like … normal salt, salt?" she asks. "Table salt?"

"Yeah."

"In the … in the break room."

"Be a love, and get it for me?" he says.

She laughs. For lack of anything sane to do. "Sure," she says. "Sure, I guess that makes as much sense as any of this. Kidnapping Satan's very obvious ex across state lines. Bringing him to the precinct. Satan stripping, also inexplicably in the precinct. Why not salt, too? Seems like a useful addendum to this clusterfuck."

"It might help me fix this," offers John. 

"Thus reducing the cluster of fuck," adds Lucifer. "Our goal, yes?"

She thought she'd been doing well, shifting into a world where Hell and Satan aren't metaphors to make people behave. But—

"Chloe," says Lucifer softly, stepping closer to her. "Are you quite all right?"

The sound of his voice—the warmth of his body—brings everything back into focus. "Oh," she says, taking a deep, sucking breath as he wraps his arms around her. "I'm sorry. This is just. This is … a _lot_ outside my comfort zone." On so many fucking levels.

He doesn't speak. She can only imagine how baffled he is by her sudden breakdown. Maybe the sudden injection of real hope, on top of everything else, is what's tipping her into nausea. Maybe the realization of how far over the line from normal she's strayed. Hell, she's in another state from normal at this point. She doesn't even know where normal is. 

She takes a moment. Refortifies a little, breathing in the scent of him.

"I'll get the salt," she mutters eventually, pulling away. 

"You needn't listen to him," says Lucifer.

"No, I'll … I'll get the salt."

She shuffles from the room, leaving John to grill Lucifer about the maybe-curse. 


	34. "rabbit out of a hat"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've occasionally been posting double chapters, but based on comments I've received I think some people may have missed them? Be sure you've read:
> 
> Chapter 29 - "ain't got scotch"  
> Chapter 33 - "reducing the cluster of fuck"
> 
> Or you're going to be lost.
> 
> Also, I did want to reiterate that I planned and started writing this story before the CW Crisis crossover that aired after S4. My Constantine is based off the cancelled NBC show only. (Granted, I totally let the jilted exes vibe I got from the CW Crisis scene to inform this story a little ;p)
> 
> Anyway, happy reading! Hope you enjoy, and thank you to everybody who takes the time to leave feedback :)

She heads toward the smell of burnt coffee. The break room is a small area with several cream-colored tables arrayed in rows. Formica countertops and faux-wood cabinets ring the room, with gaps for a refrigerator and oven. A microwave, toaster, and coffee pot rest on the counters, along with a large pink box—someone had brought donuts, though only crumbs remain. Salt and pepper packets sit by the coffee pot, between the paper napkins, wooden stirrers, and cardboard cups. She grabs a pile of the white packets.

"Chloe!" Dan calls, and she turns. "Chloe!"

He's standing in the doorway, his green jacket hugging his frame, but even with the jacket to complement his normal bronze tones, his complexion seems washed out, almost gray. Dark circles hug his bloodshot eyes. His hair is barely combed, spiking in too many different directions. 

"Dan, are you okay?" she asks, shoving the salt packets into her pocket. A few skip from her hand, landing on the floor. "You look _terrible_."

"I've had … a rough fucking weekend."

"Mamita's okay?" 

"What?" Sense comes back to him with a blink. "Oh, yeah, she's fine. She sent me home with a box of tamales for you."

"That's nice of her. Ella?"

"She's … she's fine, too." He waves toward the door. "She's in the lab or something. Needs to print some things. Listen, we need to talk."

"Is it an emergency?"

"I don't know what to fucking call it." He slumps into a chair, cradling his chin in his hands. "I just … I don't know. I don't know anything anymore." He laughs. "Maybe I'm crazy."

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. "Let me just run this stuff to the conference room real quick," she says, gesturing to her pocket, "okay?"

"Okay."

"I'll be right back," she assures him.

"Okay."

She races back, not even bothering to knock. "Hey, I got the—" 

"—and Mazikeen cut it off?" John is asking.

"That day, yes. Before I sent her to find—"

"—salt," Chloe finishes.

"What the fuck," Dan blurts behind Chloe.

Conversation stops.

John's fingers frame a patch of skin near Lucifer's groin. The place the puffy, demonic brand had been before Maze had sliced it off. Lucifer stands completely naked by the table, John kneeling at his feet like a supplicant. Or … like someone about to give a blowjob. Chloe can't decide. Doesn't _want_ to decide. At least, John seems to have gotten over his touching-Satan aversion.

"Daniel, hello," says Lucifer mildly, hands resting on his hips. "Back from Miami, after all? The Detective was doubtful you'd make it."

"What the _fuck_?" Dan repeats.

"Simply having a bit of a problem with a curse," Lucifer explains. "No need for invectives."

" _What the fuck_ , man! You haven't even been here a full workweek!"

"Would you have been less incensed if I'd done this tomorrow, then?"

Dan can only splutter.

Chloe sets the pile of salt packets onto the table, trying not to peer at Lucifer—not below the waist anyway, and … oh, God. Oh, _God_ , why'd they have to do this at the precinct, again? Oh, right, because everybody is here. Even fucking Dan, it seems. God, damn it. She grabs a handful of Dan's coat. The vein in his left temple is jumping like it might explode. 

"Dan, come on," she coaxes. "Come on, let's … let's wait out—"

"No, I need you in here," says John.

"But Dan—"

"I really need you here."

"That's … fine," Dan says, sounding suddenly numb. "I'll wait."

"But—" Chloe says.

He brushes her off, slamming the door in her face.

 _Fuck_. 

"I'll watch him," Maze grumbles. 

Chloe's not sure if that makes her feel better or worse. As Maze departs, slamming the door a second time, Chloe clenches her fingers, needles of pain spreading across her scalp as she pulls her hair into her fists. "Did we really, really, _really,_ have to do this _here_?" she grits out. 

"Perhaps lock the door, if you like?" suggests Lucifer, giving her a concerned look. 

Right. Right, yeah. That seems like a good—

"Love, I need you to activate this supposed curse," says John, brushing off his knees as he stands. 

She stills. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Whatever this is," John says, "it's camouflaged; I'm fairly certain the mark Mazikeen removed was an unrelated brand." 

He rips open a salt packet and sprinkles it over Lucifer, who sniffs and almost sneezes, griping pointlessly, "I am not your bloody pot roast."

"Just my least favorite divine briquette."

His expression darkens briefly into something wounded, though he says nothing as John touches his chest. His arms. His biceps. His belly. His quads. Like he's palpating for something specific. 

Lucifer endures the assessment in teeth-grinding, empty-eyed silence.

He's been dehumanized. Demeaned. Stripped of self. Tortured. 

Being appraised like a piece of meat must burn, must _broil_. Particularly by John, who … seems to have some history with him. Some not all good history. 

She watches a red flush creep across Lucifer's cheeks despite the blankness in his features. 

He … didn't want this either, she realizes. 

Not stripping in the precinct, not John's arrival, not _anything_. He's just desperate, and he's good at appearing calm, even when the world's crashing down around him. 

Some of her ire drains away.

"Hey, I'm here," she says softly. 

Lucifer won't look at her. 

Another salt packet, followed by an incantation, and the air seems to shift, oozing and wavering like a heat mirage. 

"Oh, my God," Chloe exclaims as an inky black mist forms mystical swirling chains around Lucifer's wrists, neck, and ankles. Bands encircle his torso from his sternum to his navel, each band spaced a hand's-width apart. His genitals, too, are wrapped in evil filaments, like Kali's Teeth. _"_ Oh, my _God_."

"So, there it is, whatever it may be," John says, stepping closer to inspect it, cursing—flinching—when his fingers brush the leaching chains. "Can you feel the bindings?"

When Lucifer opens his mouth to reply, black tendrils spill from his mouth like writhing worms. Like the curse resides in his throat. In his belly. Filling up his insides. "I've … no idea," he says. "I think it hurts?"

"You only _think_ it hurts?"

"Well, I've only been like this for several millennia, _John_ ," Lucifer almost spits, black misty bits on his chin. "Pardon me if I've no idea what's normal anymore."

"Right. Sorry." 

John pokes and prods a little more, Lucifer flinching with each touch, while Chloe keeps her mouth and nose concealed behind cupped palms. 

"I'm here," she repeats, muffled. Lucifer doesn't need to see she's an inch from breaking down. The curse looks harrowing, gruesome, repulsive, each band a twisting snake. How can he not know if he _hurts_?

"Yeah," John says. "Latent when not needed, I'm afraid." 

"That doesn't look latent to me," Chloe says, gesturing at the magical chains. "How the hell is that _latent_?"

"Because I don't have a clue how it works," says John. "We're able to discern it now, yes, but that tells me next to nothing, except that it's here."

"Okay," Chloe says, "so how do we figure out how it works?"

John regards Chloe with a grim expression. "We've got to coax it into action long enough for me to see the mechanism. Which means I need you to give him an order, and him to resist until he can't."

Shit. She looks to Lucifer. 

"Just bloody do it," Lucifer says quietly, the black cursed wisps spilling from his mouth. "Please."

"You're sure?" she asks. 

His eyes close. His fingers clench so hard by his hips his knuckles bleach of color. "I'm certain I need this to _end_. Before I lose my bloody mind more than I already have."

Her heart constricts at his unmasked anguish. Even John seems to pause. Frown. Consider. 

"Just do it, Detective," Lucifer tells her. "Do it now."

She wants to hug him, but that might make this worse. Lump burgeoning in her throat, she eases into the chair farthest from him, hugging herself. 

"Do it," he snaps. Begs. He's begging her.

"Lucifer, bring me a"—she points with shaking spaghetti fingers—"a salt packet. Now."

The chains constrict, pulling taut instead of swirling. He takes a sharp, sudden breath, but doesn't move except to steady himself against the table edge. His eyes glaze over, like he's ejecting himself from his body. Or trying to, at least.

"Is … that it?" says John.

"Yes, yes, that's it," Chloe urges. "Go."

"Quickly, if you please," Lucifer adds in a mild tone.

Aside from the straining mystical chains, the only outward indications something is happening—that he's being coerced—are the not so slow pulse of blood, heartbeat by heartbeat, into his penis, and the flush of arousal sprawling down his neck and chest, plunging the bright hues of his embarrassment toward his navel. Things he can't hide when he's buck naked on display. 

To his credit, John makes no snarky comments. Doesn't tease. Instead, he steps close again, and gets to work.

* * *

The minutes crawl as John paws and probes and incants things in other languages. Latin, maybe? Chloe doesn't know. Tiny white sparks erupt from his fingertips, crackling against the black chains at odd intervals—she might marvel at the light show if she weren't so worried about Lucifer. 

Save for the obvious physical aspects of his arousal, he appears almost bored at first. But even his considerable skills at concealing pain fail around the ten-minute mark. His lips part, and he starts to pant, his breaths ragged and uneven, his bland expression giving way to desire _._ He keeps glancing with an odd twist of lust, thirst, and slavering at the salt packets, until he tips his head back and makes himself stare at the ceiling instead. The chains seem to pull tighter. And tighter still. 

"How much longer?" Chloe asks. "Can you give him a break?"

"I'd lose my place," says John, sounding stressed. 

Chloe fights not to curse. 

Not quite stifled moaning—like exquisite pain, not pleasure—begins around twelve minutes. Drool drips down Lucifer's chin. At fifteen, his body sways slowly like a tree caught in a gale, like he's trying to self soothe. The first rasping, quiet, "Please," pops out around sixteen minutes. 

"Almost done," John says, and then adds a string of gobbledygook not in English. Flickers of light spiral out of his fingertips, snaking along Lucifer's abdomen—naked skin twitches on contact, like a horse ejecting a fly. One of the black bands encircling Lucifer's belly responds by tightening even more, digging into skin.

" _Please_ ," he begs, a ricocheting syllable. 

Biting his lip, he ducks his chin to his chest like he's trying not to scream. The chains tighten, and tighten. He fixates on the salt packets again, unblinking, every exhalation laced with quiet, awful sounds he can't seem to mask.

"Please, I can't. I _need_ to …." A bald, vulnerable admission.

"Hang on," says John, "hang on."

Twenty minutes.

This is what Lucifer had gone through on Saturday. While she brooded obliviously in the park. Except there hadn't been any salt packets for him to grab when he couldn't take it anymore. He'd just had to endure. For four fucking hours. 

"John," Chloe prods. "John, come on. Finish up."

"Done," John says, wiping his brow as he steps back. "Done. I'm done."

Lucifer almost falls on his face as he scrambles for the salt, snatches a fistful of packets off the laminate, and drops them into her lap. " _No_ ," he gasps as the chains slacken. 

John incants another phrase, and the bindings fade from view.

Lucifer slumps, panting, swallowing back saliva. He cups himself with shaking hands, like he hurts, like he _aches_. "No. No. _No_." 

His disappointment is feral. 

The intense promise of reward, never met. 

She's pretty sure he wouldn't want her to meet it for him either. Not here. Not now. Not in front of John, of all people. 

"Can I touch you?" she asks, looking down at him.

"No," he says, his panting ebbing. "Please, no." 

" _Do_ you want—"

" _No_ ," he snaps, with a pointed glance at John, who's doing a terrible job at looking interested in the crime pamphlets by the door. 

Okay, then. She grips the salt packets for lack of anything else to cling to. The paper dampens and warps in her sweaty grip. She squeezes tighter, until her fingers start to shake.

Lucifer swallows. Once. Twice. Lowers his hands from his groin with a stuttering two-steps-forward-one-step-back motion as though he's forcing— _forcing—_ himself not to rub one out right here in sheer frustration. He climbs shakily to his feet. His erection is subsiding, leaving only the hot stain of blush sprawled across his skin like he was some red-addicted painter's canvas. He steps to the chair where his suit is neatly folded.

"Do you still need me naked?" he grits out.

John turns with a leer. "Uh"—his smugness fades when it meets Lucifer's glare—"no. Nope. All done." 

The clink of a belt buckle fills the quiet as Lucifer snatches his garments from the table.

"Well?" he says as he steps into his pants. 

" _Well_ ," John replies slowly, grabbing a chair, "this … is really bad."

"Well, _I_ knew that much alread—"

"No, I mean this is _really_ bad, Luci," John retorts. "It's the bloody blackest thing I've ever seen. I'd ask if you ticked off Satan, but—"

"I do not bloody curse people! I do not collect souls! I am not _evil,_ and I would certainly never do _this_ ; not even to my worst bloody enemy." 

"So you keep saying, and yet—"

"Must we _again_?" If Lucifer's scowl could smite, the conference room would be ash. He shrugs into his shirt like he wants to rip it to shreds.

"He died, you know," John says as Lucifer buttons buttons. "After you 'helped' him. After you—"

"I am not responsible for what people choose to—"

"Like he chose _anything_ after you flashed that smarmy smirk of yours."

Lucifer scoffs. "I am not _smarmy_."

"Right. Keep telling yours—"

"Guys!" Chloe interjects. "Guys, can we, please, focus? What the hell?"

"I _am_ focused," snarls Lucifer. He jabs a finger at John. " _He's_ convinced I killed some chap he was trying to help, simply because he died immediately after we met, when, really, I had nothing to—"

"Nothing, my arse," John says. "You shouldn't be here. Angels shouldn't _be_ —"

"I'll be where I want, thank you."

"—here because then things like _this_ happen, and we get a human who could use you to raze the goddamned _Earth_. All she has to do is snap her bloody fingers, and—" 

"She would never _do_ —"

"Hey! Hey!" Chloe claps her hands. "Cool it! If you want."

John makes a face. "I don't want. This is _bad_."

"Not you," she huffs, and then nods to Lucifer. "That was directed at him."

"See?" Lucifer preens, clothed now, save for his socks and shoes, which he carries gracefully to the seat beside her. "She agrees with—"

"The 'cool it' was directed at _both_ of you," she says, not even caring if it's a command at this point. "Holy shit, you weren't kidding about enmity."

"Oh, is _that_ what you called it?" snarks John.

Lucifer rolls his eyes. "Perhaps I was too generou—"

" _Guys_." She claps again. Two fiery gazes flick toward her. "I can see you've got lingering issues from"—she gestures vaguely in a circular motion—"from before—"

"It's a long story, really," John says.

"Not so long," says Lucifer, examining his cuticles. "You've no bloody stamina."

" _Hey_ , I—"

"If you'd this compulsion wrapped around your own bits, you'd have been mewling in five bloody sec—"

"—but I don't care!" Chloe yells, clapping her hands over her head again. "Okay? I don't care what happened, or who stepped on whose toe, or why. I. Do. Not. Care." Both Lucifer and John slump back in their seats. Lucifer, she'll give a pass, barely, given the horrific ordeal he just sustained, but God _damn_. "What I _do_ care about is"—she peers intently at John—"can you fix this clust—" She grinds her teeth, remembering the compulsion just in time. "This _delight_ , or not?"

"No," says John.

"What the bloody hell do you mean, no?" Lucifer says.

"Exactly what I said: _no_." John gives them a helpless look. "I can't. This is too powerful." 

"Then what the bloody hell was _this_ for just now?" Lucifer pulls on his socks like they're enemies he's trying to dismember. "A charade to watch me embarrass myself? I _knew_ you were a pillock, but I'd hoped—"

"No," John replies slowly with simmering irritation, "this was for me to determine I can't. Bloody. Help."

The sound of fabric tearing fills the quiet. Lucifer snarls at his feet and dons his shoes anyway.

"I'm sorry," John continues. "I am. But this is like someone mixed the strengths of curses and spells while keeping none of their weaknesses. I've never seen anything like it." He shakes his head gravely. "I'm amateur hour compared to this. Really, Luci, who'd you piss off this time?"

"I told you," Lucifer grits out as the temperature in the room drops to zero, like a glacier swept through, desolating everything. "Lilith."

"How would she do this? Why?"

"Because she resents me," Lucifer asserts, his voice dark and midnight deep. "Because she's Lilith."

"That doesn't exactly cover the how."

"Oh, I don't know." He bends again to tie his laces. "Eternity and persistence?"

"Has she ever even pulled a rabbit out of a hat that you've seen?"

"Perhaps she had help."

"From who?"

"There are countless souls in Hell, from multiple universes," Lucifer says. "Take your bloody pick."

"Which brings us back to _who_?" replies John.

Lucifer stares into space and doesn't speak. The chill presses deeper, into her bones, seizing her joints, making her shudder. 

"Do you have any ideas, or"—Chloe tries not to let creeping, frigid hopelessness encroach like hoarfrost—"or thoughts about what avenues to pursue?"

"I've never seen anything like this," John repeats unhappily. 

"But … surely you can think of things to try? Nothing's really _unbreakable_ , right?"

"I suspect this is a diamond on the Mohs scale of spurses."

"Spurses?"

"A spell and a curse. A spurse." He grins. Laughs uncomfortably. "… No?" 

She fights the urge to scream. "What would you suggest if it were only a curse? Something you knew more about? Is it like the movies—kill the wizard, and the spell dies, too?"

John pales. "Oh, no, you don't want to do that, love. Assuming you even could."

"Why?"

"With spells, it's a potluck. Killing the source might fix everything, or it might achieve nothing. But curses are fully independent entities, birthed into being by intense feeling; they're not alive, per se, but when you kill their progenitor, they tend to behave—grieve—in unpredictable ways."

"Unpredictable, how?" Chloe asks.

"Let's just say there's a very real chance you'd end up making it worse."

"How could it be _worse_?" Lucifer says.

"Trust me," John replies with gravity, "you can always make things worse."

Lucifer glowers. "You would know, I suppose."

"So, what, then?" Chloe says. "What can we try to fix this? There must be something we can _try_."

John shakes his head. "Bloody hell; I don't know. True love's kiss?"

Lucifer makes a derisive sound. 

"Or, you know, a special platonic snuggle, if you're not into romance," adds John. "Same difference, as long as you're expressing a cuts-you-deep sort of love."

"A snuggle. Really."

"What? Love's a tried and true equalizer. A cure-all. World's best panacea." He rolls his eyes. "But you're right, of course. That's an astronomical reach for you. Might as well call it impossible."

Maybe not so impossible.

She meets Lucifer's gaze—a black abyss without hope, only desperation. Still, he cocks his head. Like. It won't work. But why the bloody hell not at least _try_? 

She licks her lips, wetting them, pushing closer, and then he's there, meeting her halfway. Their chairs creak as their weights shift. His lips are soft, and he tastes vaguely of mint toothpaste. He cards his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck, pulling her against him. She kisses him back. A soft, unbidden needy syllable saying nothing and everything collects in his throat—the moment the compulsion kicks in—and then his fingers tighten against her scalp. Her hair pulls a little. God, she wants more. She wants more of this. She _loves_ him. She delves deeper. Their tongues touch, and— 

"Well, I didn't mean snog right _now_ ," John grumbles from somewhere far away. "And, seriously, you need to actually love—"

"I _know_!" barks Lucifer, pulling away.

"… Oh."

Damn it, damn it, _damn it_. Her cheeks blaze with fresh blush. Lucifer looks close to tears he's so frustrated. He thumps his elbows onto the table like they're the weight of Atlas's world, and then collapses his face against trembling palms. 

"Fuck," he agonizes. " _Fuck_. Bloody fucking hell."

"You can't just lay one on each other and expect it to work," John explains from the far away place, sounding suddenly gentle. "Spelling and cursing are highly ritualized. You need a counter ritual."

Her wits are scattered like leaves in the fall wind. But Lucifer seems too discombobulated to even try speaking, so she forces herself to press onward with a raspy, "Meaning what?"

"Meaning, you've got to dig into the intent of the ritual in question, and accomplish the opposite first."

She squints at him. "I don't understand."

"Use the spurse to create an antithetical state, in effect canceling everything. That's your counter ritual. _Then_ would be when you kiss to make it stick."

"Antithetical state?" she parrots, feeling useless.

"As in figure out how to head north on a road leading south," he clarifies patiently. "Go up when the only option is down."

Hmm.

"So, like"—she struggles to string thoughts together—"make Lucifer the master instead of the slave?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"Couldn't I just let him boss me around? Would that do it?"

"That wouldn't change the fundamental nature of this thing—he'd still be your slave, beholden to your will—you'd only be reframing the status quo."

"Lipstick on a pig," she says.

"Yeah. Exactly."

Made worse by the fact Lucifer won't even muster an offended sniff about the pig remark. Fuck. She rubs her eyes. The sapping ache of exhaustion is seeping into her joints, worry and fear into her gut, making her meager stomach contents swirl. This … can't be the end. There has to be a solution. Her relationship with Lucifer can't always be like this. Lucifer can't be her slave forever. He _can't_. Talk about Hell on Earth. For _both_ of them.

"What if I just commanded Lucifer to feel powerful?" Chloe asks. 

"That's not spiting the compulsion by creating an antithetical state; that's using it as it was bloody well intended," Lucifer says, the chill in the air plunging deeper. "To _force_ me."

She glances at John, hoping he'll argue, but he doesn't. He doesn't anything.

Fuck.

"I am _tired_ of being forced," says Lucifer, his lower lip trembling a little before he tamps it. "I am _tired_."

Her eyes water at the agony in each word, but she doesn't speak. What could she say? _I wouldn't?_ They already know that's not true. _I wouldn't do it on purpose_ is the best she can offer him. And even that's no reassurance. She's lost count of the oopses she's perpetrated since he showed up. The reality is she's human, and she's not perfect, and he'll be enduring her imperfections for the rest of her life. At least, there's an eventual expiration date. Or … maybe not. Shit, she hopes he isn't forced to attend her afterlife—an eternal catch-22 no matter which way she goes, given he's locked out of Heaven and can't go to Hell. 

God.

Fuck. 

Fuck God. 

Fuck her life. 

Fuck all of this. This can't be unsolvable. This just can't be. 

"We just have to keep thinking," she says calmly. "We just have to keep thinking, is all. There's a way. I know there's a way. We are not stuck like this."

"Yes, we bloody _are._ " Lucifer's eyes are wet. "I'm stuck. I'm stuck, and no one can help me."

"I wish I could do more," John laments. "I'm truly sorry, love."

But he's not looking at her, he's looking at Lucifer, and—

"Of course you are," scoffs Lucifer, though the heat and heart is gone from his ire.

"Luci—"

"Just bloody go, will you?" He rubs the bridge of his nose. "You're free. IOU expunged."

"But—"

A blistering knock rattles the door. Chloe flinches. "Guys." Ella. "Are you done yet? Guys?" Another knock. Before Chloe can speak a word, the door swings open—fuck, she'd forgotten to lock it—and Ella peeks in. Or. Well. Doesn't peek. The blade of her left hand rests on the bridge of her nose, her fingers covering her eyes. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but"—her middle and ring fingers spread apart a millimeter, revealing a dark, glistening pupil, and she frowns—"hey, he's not naked." She looks over her shoulder. "Lucifer's not naked. I thought you said he was—"

"Thank fuck," decides Dan. 

Speaking of oopses. Dan. Another fucking thing Chloe'd forgotten about. A needle of pain stabs behind her left eye as the muscle spasms. 

Maze, the third pair of eyeballs in the pileup at the door says, "Sorry. Couldn't keep them busy anymore. Did you fix Lucifer?"

Lucifer directs them a wounded look. "No."

"Fix him?" Dan asks.

"He needed _fixing_?" adds Ella, a flash of panic encroaching into her expression. " _Now_?"

"Ella, can it wait?" Chloe asks, rubbing her eyes. "I swear, we're almost done." Temporarily. While they regroup. And _think_.

"Yes," Ella says, nodding. And then she bites her lip. "No." Her head cocks to the side. "Well, maybe?" 

She liberates the stack of folders and paper sleeves she'd stuffed into her armpit, held in place by the vise of her bicep and ribcage. Clutching the pile, she presents it like an offering. "I'm not sure. I'm not really clear on the timeframe for—oh, hi." Her attention fixes on John as she steps fully into the room, and she snatches the papers back to her chest. "Hi, attractively scruffy person I don't know."

"John Constantine, love. Who might you be?"

"Ella. Ella Lopez. Do you like hugs?"

"I—"

" _Also_ off limits," Lucifer butts in weakly. "Touch her, blah blah, entrails, blah blah."

"I suppose that rules out hugs," John says affably.

"Aww, that's sweet," Ella says to Lucifer, beaming briefly before her smile sinks into a disturbed frown. "In a domineering … possessive … creepy way." She brightens again. "But I totally appreciate the sentiment!"

Lucifer makes a soft, disgusted sound.

Ella looks back and forth between them all. "So, does he know?" She tips her nose three times at John. "Him? About the 'Devil' stuff?"

"Oh, who doesn't these days other than Daniel?" Lucifer says. "He's useless."

"Huh?" Dan says, pressing inward, followed by Maze. "Why am I useless?"

Lucifer opens his mouth, but Ella's voice pops out instead. "It's nothing, Dan. Nothing at all! Just our resident 'Devil' talking about silly Devil-y things. You know him." She laughs, strained, forced, and then she blocks the sight of her lips from Dan with the stack of papers, and mouths, _Don't tell him now. He might have a stroke._

"My point," Lucifer grinds out in the ensuing silence.

"Right. Well. Um." Ella anxiously shifts from foot to foot.

"Oh, what is it, Ms. Lopez? Speak."

"Yeah, see, um"—she coughs, the pitch of her voice rising into the stratosphere—"the apocalypse you mentioned last week?"

"I told you," Lucifer says slowly, "I averted that when I returned to Hell."

"Seriously, dude?" says Dan. "What the fuck."

She smiles. Or grimaces. Chloe can't tell. "He's not talking about _ours_ , Dan," Ella says in a sing-song tone that whistles through her teeth. 

"There was an apocalypse I didn't know about?" adds John.

"Yes," Lucifer says. "Averted."

"Yeeeeeah," Ella says, still grimacing, "maybe that one—kudos to you and stuff—but …."

"But," Lucifer says, standing up, his icy expression severe, "what, Ms. Lopez."

"I think there's a new one." She takes a breath. "Like. Now." 


	35. "the apocalypse sitch"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely feedback :) Please, enjoy!

"Cool," says Maze. "Let's kill it."

"You can't kill a fucking concept," Dan snaps.

"Try me." 

The temperature in the room seems to drop again, an emotional squall billowing from the abyss. The hairs on the back of Chloe's neck stand on end as every instinct in her body screams: _apex predator is here._

And not Maze either. 

Lucifer. 

Dan grabs the doorframe as if he'll drown if he doesn't. Everyone freezes, Ella, Maze, and Dan bunched by the door, John at one end of the conference table, Lucifer and Chloe at the other. 

"Umm," says Ella. " _Whoa_ , dude. Ease up."

Lucifer doesn't blink, but the oppressive, frigid pall lifts by degrees. The adrenaline bulldozing through Chloe's veins subsides to a trickle. 

"What do you mean, a _new_ one?" Chloe asks, breathless.

"I mean, the previous end of the world has a plus one," explains Ella, "and she's crashing the buffet as we speak!"

"Now, love," John says despite his rattled expression, "not to say I don't believe you, but what makes you think that?" His patronizing tone is so sweet he could spread his pancakes with it. "Apocalypses aren't a dime a dozen. There's actually only supposed to be the one—"

" _Which_ one?" says Ella. "When?"

"The one with the capital A," Lucifer answers tightly, "quite a long time from now, Ms. Lopez."

Ella brightens. "So, maybe this is just a little a, and it's not so bad? That's promising, right?" 

"Explain," commands Lucifer. He points imperiously to the conference table. "Now."

"Okay, well," she babbles as she takes a seat, the scrape of chair legs against the floor making everybody cringe, "remember how we were discussing Mr. Blackthorn's death, and you said he might be Hell-bound given the manslaughter sitch, but that that didn't explain Azrael's absence, and I said maybe the apocalypse does, and you said no, no, the apocalypse had been averted, and—"

"Who's Azrael?" asks Dan.

"My sister," says Lucifer, his eyes still locked on Ella. "The Angel of Death. Currently MIA."

"Seriously?" Dan says with a snort. "There's _another_ one of you?"

"Oh, yes, I've thousands of siblings."

"Thousands," Dan parrots.

"Yes."

"Are they all delusional, or just you?"

"Well, I've not met them all—only the important ones—so, I couldn't say."

"Dude, do you even _hear_ yourself?"

"Do _you,_ Daniel?" Dan flinches as Lucifer steps closer—something glitters in the harsh fluorescent light, at the hollow where Dan's collarbones meet. "Nice bling," Lucifer adds, chewing on the last word like it's gristle. "Since when are you devout?"

Dan tucks the silver crucifix behind the ribbed collar of his t-shirt. "Why'd you come back?" he accuses. "Why now? Just when everybody was starting to—" 

"Starting to _what_ , Daniel?" 

"Act normal again, God, damn it!" Dan snaps. "You've been back less than two weeks, and nothing is fucking normal anymore!" 

"And, of course, you blame me," Lucifer says with a scowl.

"Yes, I fucking blame you!" Dan roars, his eyes bloodshot and his face pale. 

"Dan," Chloe says, rushing past Lucifer, trying to keep the peace. "Dan, hey. What's wrong?"

"Why do you take _his_ side?" grouses Lucifer. "He's the one accosting _me_."

"I'm not taking anybody's side. Look, we're all clearly tired, but—"

" _Fuck_!" Dan shouts, slamming the bulletin board with the heel of his hand. Papers and tacks and staples fall to the ground in a pile at his feet, pieces tinkling as they ricochet across the floor. The harsh, ragged sounds of his panting fill the quiet. He smacks the wall a second time, softer, punctuating it with another agonized, "Fuck _!"_

"Hey," she says softly, stepping close, despite feeling Lucifer's scowl burning into her back like sunlight concentrated through a magnifying glass. "Dan. Hey. Come on." She pats his shoulder blade encouragingly. "Let's go outside. We can talk about what's bothering you. I'm sorry I put you off, earlier."

"No"—he sniffs, the sound bubbly—"you need to listen to Ella."

"You sure?"

"Yes, you need to listen to her. This is really important." He takes a deep, calming breath, but it quivers. "I'm sorry; I'm fine. I'm …." He peers over his shoulder briefly enough to say, "Just … Ella, do your presentation. I'm fine." 

Ella is draped against the table, humming _Twinkle, Twinkle_ to herself, her arms clutched over her ears like she's an ostrich trying to bury her head in the sand. 

"Ella," Dan calls again as he gives Chloe a nudge. "Go sit. You need to sit for this— _Ella_."

The song cuts off, and Ella looks up. "Are we done screaming yet?"

"Yes, _are_ we?" asks Lucifer testily, glaring at Dan.

Dan squeezes his eyes shut briefly, steeling himself before turning around. "Sorry, man. I'm sorry." Lucifer's hackles seem to lower. "Please, just listen to her, guys. Don't pay attention to me. I'm just … I'm fine."

Everyone but Dan sits.

"Okay," Ella says, "where was I?" She thinks for a moment before snapping her fingers. "Right. So I said maybe the apocalypse does, and you said no, no—"

"Ms. Lopez," Lucifer says, "my memory is eidetic; you needn't provide the entire bloody abstract."

Ella glances at Chloe. 

"I remember, too. Go on."

"Well, that got me curious," Ella continues, "so I googled apocalypse. And, you know. Basic stuff popped up, like a definition, and a Wikipedia article—I swear, they're running a racket on search results—"

"Yes, yes, we get it," says Lucifer. "Continue."

"—but I was like, I know what the word means. This doesn't help me. I wonder what people are _saying_ about apocalypses, you know? So, I went on Twitter, Reddit—a couple other social media sites—and it turns out _lots_ of people are mentioning apocalypses in conjunction with ghosts."

"Ghosts," repeats Lucifer in a flat tone.

"Yeah. Ghosts." Ella's chair creaks as she scoots forward. "Lucifer, there've been _tons_ of ghost sightings recently." Her fingers splay like mock explosions. "Like … _tons_."

Lucifer's sharp gaze flicks to Chloe, and they share a look. Shit. _Shit_. Ella had gotten a lot farther in her research than Chloe had. 

"No such thing as ghosts, love," says John.

"Yes, we've been over that already," Lucifer says primly. "She knows they're ejected souls."

"What?" Dan asks behind them. "They're ejected what?"

"Since when?" John demands. "I thought the Angel of Death or one of her lackeys whisked everybody away immediately." 

"No, they're just ghosts, Dan," Ella enunciates. " _Really_." She makes repeated slicing motions under her chin, the gesture hidden from Dan by the high back of her chair.

Lucifer sighs. "Not to be the me's advocate, Ms. Lopez, but humans have been telling each other ghost stories since the beginning of bloody time. I fail to see how this connects to an apocalypse."

Ella pokes the stack of papers she'd brought, drawing everybody's attention to the top page—a graph with a mostly-flat red line connecting all the data points. "This shows search trends about ghosts for the past year," she explains, tracing the line. "Things are relatively flat until a spike around Halloween—normal, right?—but unlike last year, the spike never leveled out afterward. It just kept going up." 

She pushes the top graph to the right, revealing another graph underneath. "This shows searches about the apocalypse. Another huge spike right now."

"But that doesn't _mean—"_

"And here's all the US news articles I could find mentioning conditions similar to what we encountered at the crime scene where Mr. Blackthorn died," Ella bulls onward, nudging the second graph to the left. 

"Ms. Lopez—"

"The kicker?" Ella continues. The remaining stack of articles is about three inches thick. Dozens of staples kink the pile. "Almost every"—she jabs her index finger into the pile, which collapses slightly under the onslaught—"single"—again—"one of these"—again—"is dated from the day you crashed and combusted in Chloe's kitchen, or after."

"Crashed and combusted," Dan echoes, his voice trailing away. He makes a face. "Wait, he _what?"_

"This could be normal, though," Chloe says, a last ditch attempt at denial. "Lucifer's right. People make stuff up."

Ella pushes the whole pile forward, save for a few pages. "These," she says, pointing to the meager remains, "are all the articles with the same parameters I could find _worldwide_ from the entire _year_ , dated _before_ Lucifer arrived."

Dread condenses like a black hole in Chloe's stomach. She glances at Lucifer again. His gaze is thousand-yard, haunted and tired. 

She grabs the stack of articles dated after Lucifer's arrival. The top page is a small printout from WaPo. The article mentions a hospital closure in Detroit due to an unknown smell. 

They'd heard that story. On the radio. When she'd been driving Lucifer to Linda's on Sunday. Detroit officials had called it a gas leak. 

Skimming the article, she can see said officials don't know _what_ the smell is, only that it's bad enough to make people sick. They're calling it a gas leak, because what the hell else is there to say? 

She flips to the next article. A woman in Denver who'd lost her husband last week—he'd died in his sleep after a years-long battle with cancer—can't go into her house anymore, because of the smell and the cold and the banging noises.

Next article, a hit-and-run in Phoenix on a normally sleepy street. The air is freezing and smells like rot despite no discernible cause. A car parked next to the crime scene had been totaled as though hit by a meteor. Not hail. Not a baseball. A fucking meteor.

Chloe realizes with sinking clarity why her own research hadn't gone anywhere. Nobody is calling this "ghosts" in reputable news sources.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Somebody's going to get hurt.

She's shocked it hasn't happened already.

"But I knew you guys would be skeptical," Ella says as Chloe's dread snowballs into an ice-packed boulder. "I knew it. I was skeptical, myself. I'm a scientist, after all. We're supposed to test our hypotheses. So, I went to Florida."

Chloe pauses her perusal, frowning. "What does Florida have to do with anything?" 

"Old people live in Florida," Ella explains. "In high density. And you know who dies a lot, other than murder victims and sick people?"

"Idiots," says Maze.

"Yes!" Ella says, clapping her hands and pointing to Maze. "But no!"

"Old people," Chloe says, sinking.

" _Exactly_ ," Ella replies in a dire tone, nodding. "Old people die a lot. And a whole bunch of these articles I found concern Florida sightings. Plus, Dan was in Florida. Seemed like kismet."

"Ms. Lopez, aren't older humans also more likely to be senile? How the bloody hell do you know this isn't some kind of"—Lucifer gestures vaguely at nothing—"of mass dementia?" He grips the edge of the table, leaving dents in the laminate as he adds through his teeth, "There really is only supposed to be the one bloody Apocalypse."

"That's why I went to confirm!" Ella says. "Why I took Dan! Dan's, like, _Scully_. If _he's_ convinced, that's a pretty ringing endorsement, don't you think?"

"You're saying you actually tracked down the 'ghosts' mentioned in some of these stories?" Chloe asks.

"Yup. Yeah." Ella nods repeatedly, her ponytail bobbing. "We saw four of them for ourselves." She looses a stressed gust of air. "I mean, we didn't _see_ them, see them, but it was—"

"Cold," says Dan from the doorway, his voice deep and dark and distant. He touches the collar of his shirt as if searching for the crucifix. "And loud. And they smelled like death."

"Wait," John says, not smiling anymore. "Cold, loud, and smelled like death, _how_? Give me specifics."

"I'm sorry," Ella says. "Who are you, again?"

"John. John Constantine."

"But … why are you here?"

"My services were demanded."

Her left eyebrow forms a sharp arch as she regards him suspiciously. "Services, which are …?"

"I'm a warlock," he says. "Exorcist, demonologist, dabbler in the dark arts." He reaches into his pockets. "I've got some business cards in here, somewhere …."

"Jesus Christ," says Dan.

"I thought you said black-magic users had died out," Chloe says.

"Jesus _Christ_ ," repeats Dan, raking his fingers through his hair like he wants to yank it out in bloody tufts.

"I only meant the practitioners who could potentially harm Luci," John says. "Not everybody ever—ah, here they are." He pulls a stack of rectangular white cards—slightly crumpled, some with burnt edges, one impaled by what seems to have been a swarm of evil toothpicks—from his inside pocket, and dumps them near the center of the table. "Black magic dying out's about as likely as a global kumbaya over politics."

Chloe reaches for a card as she settles next to Ella. There's a crossed-out phone number, and a circled e-mail address listed on the bottom, and sure enough, the card says exactly what he'd just said, although it replaces "dabbler in" with "master of." 

Master of the dark arts.

Like … like fucking Voldemort or something.

"Huh," Ella says slowly, reading the business card as well before looking askance at Lucifer, "I didn't know this was actually a thing." 

" _Harry Potter_ 's nonfiction," Chloe blurts, a tad manic. "Who knew?"

Lucifer doesn't reply, only stares into a distant nothing. 

"Right. Um. Well." Ella clears her throat, turning her attention back to John. "You sound conveniently and extremely applicable to this situation?"

John laughs uneasily. "Funny, that." 

"So. Specifics." Her chair creaks as she squirms and resettles. "As in the ambient temperature's like zero—"

"Celsius or Fahrenheit?" 

"Fahrenheit." Ella pulls a handwritten sheet—the Is are all dotted in hearts—from the bottom of the stack, sliding the page across the table for John to read. "The ambient temperature's like zero degrees Fahrenheit without any obvious cause. There's noise. Like a loud, intermittent BANG, BANG, BANG with no discernible source. And it smells like a pile of dead bodies in a bog pit."

"My infestation," John says gravely, his voice trailing away as he reads.

"What infestation?"

"This is exactly what I was dealing with in Cleveland." He looks up again. "The infestation. At a hospice in Tremont."

"At a hospice. Where people _die_." Ella grimaces, rocking in her chair a little. "See, it's everywhere!"

"I thought it was a demon," says John.

"I told you, Bakasura is dead," grouses Lucifer from out of nowhere.

"Well, that doesn't rule out _other_ demons," John retorts. "I've done six exorcisms in the past month. Dozens in the past year."

"Dozens?" says Chloe softly, sinking. "Really?"

" _Yes_! Why do you bloody think I want this one"—he jabs his thumb at Lucifer—"gone back where he belongs? He's a murderer by proxy as far as I'm concerned."

Lucifer, ashen, doesn't argue.

"Hey, he is not," says Ella indignantly before Chloe can.

"What about, like … the last five years?" Chloe adds, desperation burgeoning.

"Roughly the same, why?" answers John.

"A decade ago? Were you a warlock then?"

"Yes. Considerably fewer. _Why?_ " 

"Nothing." She feels sick. "Nothing. Never mind."

An awkward silence stretches. 

"Right, so, what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks do we _do_?" Ella asks when no one else continues. She glances at John. "Can _you_ help us?"

"End of the world's above my pay grade," John answers wryly, shrugging. "My expertise is more about how to keep her kind"—he gestures to Maze—"where they belong."

"But … you could try? You could try to help?"

John's sucked-a-lemon expression says he'd rather take a trip on the Titanic than spend more time with the Devil. "This seems like _his_ bloody mess, not mine, given the correlating dates." He narrows his eyes at Lucifer. "I think he thinks it, too, given how bloody quiet he's being. Never thought I'd see the day with Satan bloody speechless."

Lucifer's eyes flick to each one of them in turn, pausing longer on Chloe. He'd been doing a decent job at hiding how unsettled he is, but she can see it. All over his face. Encroaching into his laughter-turned-worry lines. 

He looks old. Older than his body. Older than an epoch. Not for the first time, she gets a sense of him. Not her Lucifer—not the disaffected club owner who's become her steadfast partner, best friend, and teammate—but the archangel who's seen everything. Done everything. Been _everything_.

Divinity, pulled to earth. 

"I," he begins, only to trail away into dissonant silence.

"Why do we think _he_ can help?" Dan asks. "He's _insane_."

Lucifer bristles, instantly humanized again. "I am not."

"Yes, you _are_ , dude. And this is—"

"Too much for your tiny mortal brain to handle?" 

"Oh, fuck _you_!"

"Not even if you ask me nicely anymore." 

"Guys," Chloe says. "Guys, come on." Lucifer glares at the ceiling—at God, maybe. But he settles, at least. Still seems willing to follow her lead. And despite the skitter of fear like spiders up her spine, Chloe tries to think rationally. Be a detective. Bakasura's kill hadn't had an ejected soul lingering around it. But. "Ella, do we know if this is happening to everyone who dies everywhere?" 

"I wondered that, too," Ella replies, "so I checked into some recent Florida obits while I was there." A pause. "The answer is definitively no. It's not even happening for most deaths. Just some. Which makes sense. Imagine if it were everybody. Something like 7,800 people die each day in this country, let alone the world. We'd already be hoarding toilet paper by now—rioting in the streets."

"Did you find a point of commonality between deaths leaving souls behind?" asks Chloe. 

"I haven't done much research on that yet," Ella says. "Not enough time. So …."

All eyes turn to Lucifer again. 

"Well, how am I supposed to bloody help?" he snaps. "Even if this is my fault, somehow, I'm bloody well _trapped_." He takes a breath that quivers a little in his chest. Or, maybe, Chloe's imagining it. 

"… Trapped?" says Ella warily.

His fists clench, and his jaw bulges at the hinge. 

"Could you calm them all, maybe?" Chloe asks. "If we gave you a list?"

He darkens like an eclipse. "That seems rather like trying to fix a broken dam with an inch of duct tape, now, doesn't it?"

"Still, it's something," she says. "Could buy us time." And keep people from getting hurt until—

"Until _what_? None of us has any idea what's bloody going _on_." He rises from the chair to pace—prowl—in tight, claustrophobic circles around the table. "We need more bloody information."

"For once," Dan says, "I agree with him."

"Nobody bloody asked you," Lucifer grouses, pausing his circuit a few steps past the door. He tips his Roman nose toward the ceiling, closes his eyes, and steeples his fingers. Ella takes the cue and steeples her fingers, too.

"Seriously?" says Dan. "Praying's not gonna fix this; we need to _call_ someone—the National Guard, or—"

Only for Lucifer to growl, low and savage, at first in registers Chloe can barely hear, but she can _feel_. Deep in her chest. Dissonant and terrifying. She shivers. Then he crescendos into a sharp almost bark of frustration as he opens his eyes and lowers his hands. "Why won't anybody bloody _answer_ me? _Nobody is bloody answering me_!"

"Because the voices in your head aren't _angels_ ," Dan snaps, pushing away from the doorframe. _"_ They're delusions.Jesus Christ"—his voice cracks, strangled with emotion—"this is not—"

"Are you bloody deaf?" Lucifer replies, his eyes an abyss. "There _are_ no voices in my head, Daniel, because nobody is bloody _answering_."

"Dude, stop it!" Dan advances on Lucifer, getting into his face, but Lucifer doesn't give ground. Dan pokes Lucifer's lapel with his index and middle fingers, and Lucifer's bleak void of a gaze swivels downward, sharpening like a knife against a whetstone. 

"Do not," Lucifer says, "touch me."

"Dan." Chloe scrambles from her chair along with John to intervene. "Dan, don't!" 

"Just stop!" Dan continues, frothing, oblivious, lost from himself. "This is fucking _serious_ , and you're _not_ the fucking Devil. You're—"

"Who?" Lucifer's eyes flash red, a flickering fire. A whorl of damnation, agony, brimstone, and woe. "Who am I?"

The floor drops out from underneath her, and her guts swoop. Dan makes a high-pitched noise like someone stuck a knife between his ribs and let out his air in a breathy squeal. He takes a swing. There's a whisper of movement her eyes can't process. A smack of flesh on flesh, as Dan's fist impacts with the flat of Lucifer's now raised palm.

Fight or flight turned fight turned instant stalemate.

"Well, that's new," Lucifer says, closing his larger hand over Dan's, his fingers pressing into the creases of Dan's knuckles. "Most people simply wet themselves."

"Oh, God," Dan chokes out, staring at the collision of fists like he killed someone. "Oh, God."

Effortlessly, Lucifer forces Dan's fist to his hip, pausing a moment before letting go, like Lucifer expects some kind of relapse, but there is none. Only shock. Only stillness. 

"I am not a liar, Daniel," Lucifer says, his voice like silk against her spine as he sneers. "And I am not God. Cease your incessant slandering."

"Sorry. S-sorry," Dan babbles, his eyes wide and harrowed, his face suddenly sallow, "I didn't mean …."

Lucifer cocks his head, watching Dan like an entomologist watches a bug. Dan doesn't raise his arm again, doesn't speak, only puffs up his chest a little, like he's trying to look bigger than he is. 

"My, my." Lucifer's sneer morphs into a respectful, almost impressed consideration. "You _are_ a complicated one, aren't you?"

"What? What does that—"

"Later," Lucifer says in the midnight voice, placing an index finger to his lips in a shushing motion. "When the apocalypse sitch is resolved."

"But—"

Then there's a flash of gleaming white. Lucifer is gone. And Dan sinks to the ground, shuddering.


	36. "a terrible idea"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everybody for taking the time to leave feedback :) It's been amazing hearing all your thoughts and theories about the impending ghost-pocalypse! Anyway, please enjoy!

He sets down on the stoop of Linda's flat in Beverly Hills, approximately ten seconds after he leaves Daniel quaking in his sneakers at the precinct. 

_Lucifer,_ the Detective prays, a megaphone splitting his skull before he can gain his bearings. _Lucifer, where are you going?_

His already aching groin tightens. ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER, the compulsion sings in his head, a siren to rival Aglaophonus, the music strangling him with unfettered, unwanted desire. But his departure had been abrupt. Distracted. He doesn't have the Detective's personal cellphone with him, and he'd left behind the bloody iPad. 

He knocks. "Doctor. Doctor Linda." He knocks again, gritting his teeth. No answer. This existence is intolerable. "Doctor Linda, please; it's urgent." Another knock. "Doc—"

The door opens, revealing the Doctor, wearing a pink bathrobe covered in spit-up. Her hair is a wild, snagged mess of tangles, fingerprints thickly smudging her glasses. The child, squirming in her grip, screams like a wounded cat. Lucifer fights with everything he has not to clap his hands over his ears. He is not _weak_.

"Lucifer," Linda asks loudly over the racket, "what's—"

"Give me your cellphone." He holds out his hand. 

"But—"

"Give me your bloody cellphone, _now_ ," he snaps, making grasping motions with his outstretched fingers. 

She steps aside, boggling, and nods toward the coffee table. He snatches the device, sending the pile of mail and magazines that'd been perched precariously beneath it cascading to the floor. The phone is locked. 

"Passcode?" he barks over the screaming child. 

"Charlie's birthday," Dr. Linda says.

The lock screen gives way to Lucifer's shaking fingers. Sweat drips down his neck. A moan sticks in his throat as he navigates to text messages. To the contact labeled "Chloe Decker." 

He shifts back and forth on his feet, agonized, venting his need to move. To rut. _I'm at Dr. Linda's,_ he types quickly. _Praying and texting questions forces me to reply. It's not the same as speech. Please be more judicious._

The read receipt doesn't show right away. Dad, damn it, he doesn't want to fly back. Not now. Not with the shredded remains of Daniel's sanity to greet him. Not with John's inevitable acerbic blame, or the Detective's disappointed gaze. Lucifer had been a bloody idiot, letting his frayed patience get the better of him. 

Cursing, Lucifer dials her number. 

The Detective doesn't pick up. 

He calls again. 

Nothing. 

He flips back to texts. Still, no read receipt. Bloody hell. She's probably doting over bloody Daniel instead of checking her bloody daddamned phone. 

"Lucifer," Dr. Linda says behind him, her voice almost lost in the endless cacophony of ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER, ANSWER HER. "What on earth—"

The child shrieks and shrieks. "Shh, baby; it's all right," Dr. Linda says. "Please, _please,_ will you take this bottle?"

A responding screech says no.

Lucifer hunches over, pressing his hands against his thighs, the phone trapped under one palm, as he balances himself in a stressed, pseudo-crouch. The idea of answering his Detective is a naked lover in his mind's eye, and he wants to climb it like a bloody tree. 

He must return, answer her face to face. Now. Or he'll burst. "Dad, damn it, I will _not_ ," he snaps to no one. "I do not wish it! I do not wish to be dragged about and summoned like a bloody dog!"

The child's awful screaming crescendos.

"Lucifer," scolds the Doctor, "don't _yell_. There, there, baby. Mommy's—"

A high-pitched "bing" adds to the discord. Gasping, he unlocks the phone again and checks the text messages. Something from the Detective. Her name flashes across notifications. 

_Oh_ , she's texted him. _I'm sorry._

That's all. That's it. His desire snowballs into nothing. A promise of completion, withdrawn like a flirtation gone tragically wrong. He straightens, swallowing back spit. His balls ache. Every muscle burns. His head throbs, a slowly pulsating drum. He can't quite catch his breath. His body is exhausted. 

Except the bloody world is bloody _ending_. 

Dr. Linda bounces the wriggling hell beast on her hip. 

"I need you to fix me," Lucifer says. "Now." 

"Lucifer, this is really not a good ti—"

" _Please_ ," he begs in a soft voice. "Please, help me."

Her mouth opens, but all that emerges is shrieking. She grimaces, kissing the squirming child's temple.

"Oh, bloody—" He grinds his molars. "Give the child here."

"Huh?"

He waves his hand. "Come, come. Give it here."

She stares at him like he's grown six antlers, but takes a step toward him anyway, holding the wiggling, wriggling, whining creature out with her short arms. Lucifer grabs an old issue of _Cosmopolitan_ from the end table and drapes it over his shoulder, the crease resting on his collar bone. He takes the child, making sure its drooling, wailing orifice rests above the magazine rather than the pristine wool of his Italian suit. Paper crinkles. The child howls.

Lucifer closes his eyes, imagining. A Saturday morning—the compulsion is nothing but a silly nightmare he had—and he wakes beside his Detective. She smiles at him, pleased to share his company. _Hey,_ she murmurs. _I love you._ He pulls his fingers through her hair and beams back at her. _And I you,_ he replies. Everything is warm, and quiet, and safe, and there is love. 

He takes that bucket of peace and projects it.

"What are you doing?" asks Linda softly.

"Amenadiel is far better at this than I, but—" A negligible weight sags against his shoulder, its crying diminishing to sniffles and then silence. "There we are. All fixed." 

With splayed fingers, Lucifer pats the child. It smells faintly of strawberry jam and divinity. When it's not kicking and screaming and being woefully ornery, it's not … _altogether_ displeasi—no.

Oh, no. He will not get sucked in.

Scowling, he proffers the calmed child back to Dr. Linda. "Please, will you help me now?" 

Dr. Linda gapes. "I've never seen him calm down so fast." 

"It's an angel thing," Lucifer says dismissively. The ability to project peace and security. Even when he doesn't feel a blighted bit of it himself. "Please, Doctor?"

She hugs the child tightly, cupping the back of its head, and kissing its crown. "Let me put him in his crib and take a shower first."

* * *

In her absence, he raids her liquor cabinet, finishing her tequila—the _Gran Dovejo Reposado_ —in several hearty swallows. The vodka remains. Some cheap trash she probably bought at the drugstore for $10 or less. Still, he unscrews the cap and chugs that, too. Anything to ease the ache. The undercurrent of disquiet. The feeling his skin doesn't fit. That it isn't his—that he's owned.

Forever. 

Even with the Detective holding his leash—no matter that their romantic situation has improved—he isn't certain he can survive in captivity much longer. 

"I confess," Dr. Linda says, padding softly from the master bedroom, "I didn't expect to see you back so soon. Or … at all."

"Yes, well, that makes two of us," he replies darkly. He tips the bottle for another swig. 

"Lucifer—"

He ends her disapproval with a sharp glare, drinking the last drops of vodka almost defiantly. She's wearing a clean blue bathrobe, her hair wet and flattened to her scalp. Her brow creases, dipping her eyebrows behind the frames of her glasses, and she folds her arms, but doesn't speak. When the liquor's gone, his head isn't even buzzing yet, and his muscles feel as raw and ragged as they'd started. No relief. Bloody hell, why can't he get any bloody—

The bottle breaks in his hand, glass snapping and shattering. 

"Oh, my!" the Doctor says. "Let me get a broom."

Bloody. Hell.

"No, no, you sit, darling," he says, waving her off. "I'll fix it. The glass can't hurt me, after all."

He carries the sharp, shining shards still cupped in his hands to the trashcan, returning with the dustpan and brush she keeps in her kitchen. The broken bits shriek and squeal as he rakes them across her floor tiles. He can feel her curiosity burning into the back of his neck the whole bloody time.

"Lucifer, what's changed since yesterday?" she asks when he slumps unhappily onto the sofa. "You expressed some very strong feelings about not wanting to be here."

"I _don't_ desire to be here," he retorts. 

"Lucifer—"

"But I think perhaps it's my fault."

She tilts her head. "What is?"

"Everything."

* * *

He summarizes. All of it. From his supposed crash into Chloe's kitchen—which he still doesn't quite remember—to John Constantine's snarky accusations, though he specifically skips the gruesome implications of his encounter with Bakasura. No need to upset her further, not with information of unknown veracity. Not when, as the ensuing silence stretches into infinity, she's already staring back at him, her frozen face a perfect echo of _the Scream_. 

"Doctor?"

Her analog wall clock ticks noisily. With his eyes, he traces the intricate latticework in her back window—reflected in the lenses of her glasses—trying to give himself something to do besides agonizing, but …. 

"Doctor?" 

She still doesn't move. Doesn't speak.

"Please, don't bloody tell me I've broken you again," he says, rubbing his palms up and down his thighs, across the soft wool of his suit. "I don't need a bloody broken therapist on top of everything else." 

Her mouth clacks shut. She licks her lip. Quickly. Like she's nervous. And then she shudders.

"Doctor?" 

"Wow," she says with gravity. "I mean … _wow_."

"Right," he replies with a clipped nod. "So you can see now why I need my memories back immediately, yes?" 

"I just … wow."

"Yes. You said that."

She shakes her head. "You … really think the world is ending?"

"Perhaps not _ending_ , ending," he admits. "I imagine the planet itself is in no real danger. But … humans? Your days are somewhat numbered if these so-called 'hauntings'"—he uses air quotes—"are allowed to continue unchecked."

"And you think Amenadiel's disappearance is related, somehow?" 

"I said that already." He frowns. "Did I not say that?"

"And you literally have to do everything Chloe tells you? _That's_ what you meant when you texted me from Chloe's phone?"

"I said that as well." 

"Like"—Dr. Linda looks at the ceiling, thinking—"if she told you to jump off a bridge, you'd just poof. Right off the ledge." Her lips twist, and she makes a shhckkkt sound that must represent his imminent bone-breaking landing.

"Yes, Doctor, do keep up, will you?" He claps his hands at her, making her flinch. "I explained all of this in rather excruciating detail already, did I not?"

Her mouth moves, only emitting the cracks and pops of active vocal cords having nothing to say. He slaps his thighs, rubbing again. Up and down and up and down, but the motion doesn't soothe anymore, and his fidgeting graduates into rocking. His throat constricts. He tugs at his collar. The room seems to waver like he's spending time with Molly.

"Doctor, I—" 

"Why didn't you tell me before?" 

"Am I not speaking bloody English?" he roars, snapping to his feet. "I only discovered the apocalypse sitch toda—"

"No, I meant the _curse_ , Lucifer!" she asks, not giving ground. 

Oh. "Well, it's not … _precisely_ a curse."

"Spurse! Whatever! Why didn't you tell me about the thing you've known about since day one!"

"It," he tries, "wasn't relevant?" 

"Not _relevant_?" She sighs violently. "Lucifer, it would have changed the entire way I approached your treatment!"

"It would have?"

" _Yes_!" she exclaims, throwing her hands in the air before echoing, less emphatic, "Yes." 

He winds around the couch to pace behind it. Each time he hits the end, he spins on his heels. A mere seven-foot track. Why is her house so bloody small? 

"The majority of our sessions over the years have revolved around your perception of being manipulated, of not having a real choice," she says, the words running together in his brain like one long wail. "And, now, you've been plunged into a situation where it's not just paranoia and issues with self-image; it's _fact_. You're bound to be having some feelings about—"

"Doctor, please—"

"—loss of control," she barrels onward, "and had I _known_ that, I would have started our sessions focusing there. You've been in a state of hyper-arousal since—"

"Yes, the Detective mostly fixed that with the iPad," he interjects.

"Not _that_ kind of arousal," she retorts. "I meant your body is trapped in high alert, constantly expecting danger or harm."

"The Detective wouldn't—"

"But she has, right?" says Dr. Linda. "Accidentally." 

He loosens the top button on his shirt. All he can think of is the feel of his nails digging runnels into the Detective's floor as he'd sobbed fruitlessly for help.

"Lucifer?" 

"Yes," he blurts, panting. "Yes, she … hurt me."

"Are you okay?"

"I cannot live like this," he admits in a small voice. "I thought I could perhaps abide, with her specifically, with the Detective. Being compelled meant I'd a perfect excuse to stay with her. But it's not perfect; it's awful"—his fingers scrunch as he yanks them through his hair—"not that I blame her, of course." 

"Of course you don't."

"This isn't her fault. She's a victim as well. She's as bloody well trapped as I am."

"You're allowed to express displeasure with this situation," Dr. Linda soothes. "I understand you're not disparaging Chloe, too."

"I want to be _free_ ," he says. "I don't want to be punished every time she forgets herself; every time _I_ almost forget …."

He pulls off his jacket and drapes it over the back of the couch. Everything's too tight. He's chained. He can practically see the thick, cold line of oozing black links welded to a cuff around his ankle. A magical, unbreakable tether to the Detective. 

Behind her, Hell. 

Waiting to claim him should he ever slip her leash.

What a laugh, freedom.

"Do you think," Dr. Linda begins hesitantly, "you could have been attached to someone less benevolent, in the gap of time you don't remember?" 

He grips the back of the sofa, clutching for dear life as he bows, stretches, trying to relieve the unbearable tension in his shoulders. His wings twitch in the ether, begging to be released, but he won't. What's the point? Where would he go? He can't bloody _go_ anywhere. Not anywhere useful, anyway. 

"Lucifer?"

"Yes," he says, the word clipped, as his shoes swing into view. "I know I was. Lilith."

"You've remembered some?"

"Yes. More and more, lately. I can't make it stop."

"Anything substantial? Or just flashes?"

"Both."

Dr. Linda ponders that. "Maybe the spurse did something to you. Something _else_ , I mean. Damaged your recollections, or … maybe you don't have dissociative amnesia at all. Maybe this really is a traumatic brain injury, only … magical? One that wouldn't show up on medical scans?"

"Also a possibility," he admits, his biceps shaking as he holds his pose. "Or, perhaps, it's both. Dissociative amnesia _and_ injury, but blast my immortal body; I'm healing it anyway." 

"Well, I wish you'd told me before," she grumbles. "It would have changed _everything_." 

He closes his eyes for a moment. "I'm sorry, Doctor. Truly, I didn't think—"

"You mean, you didn't trust me," she says, not accusatory, just … truth. Simple. Tired. To the point. 

He looks up. Straightens. "Doctor, of course, I trust you."

"But not fully." 

"No," he admits softly. Nobody has that distinction anymore, it seems, save for the Detective. "I suppose not."

"Lucifer, I can't help you if you don't trust me enough to share these contexts up front."

"I'm … telling you everything now." 

"Under extreme duress, you are," she replies. "Would you even be here if the apocalypse hadn't forced your hand?"

"But …." But. He stills, feeling like he got caught flat-footed in a fight to the death. His head hurts. His eyes prickle. He blinks back a tidal wave. She's … supposed to help him. No matter what he says, what he does, or how badly he employs her advice, she's _always_ supposed to—

"I told you from the beginning our goal isn't to restore your memories," she says.

"But it's _my_ goal now," he insists. He doesn't want them. Ever. But. "I need them, so I can figure out what to bloody _do_."

"And that's what I'm saying," she continues calmly. "We're at cross purposes. Getting your memories back isn't a reasonable expectation, and setting you up to pursue unreasonable expectations is not how I work."

"Doctor, the world. Is. Ending," he grits out. "Eventually, there won't be any safe space left for humans to live. And that's not even considering the potential for the fabric of reality to rip."

"Rip?" She sits up in her chair. "Reality could _rip_?"

"Eventually, yes!" he exclaims. "Souls lingering in this fashion is not _natural_. I shudder to think what will happen when they're so concentrated they're forced to intermingle. Might as well set off a nuclear bomb." 

"That's"—she takes a breath and exhales in a gust—"bad."

"Yes!" he hisses. "It's astronomically bad! Like _Ghostbusters_ —don't cross the bloody streams!" He paces again. "So, if you won't bloody help me, how would you recommend I make myself recall—"

"I recommend you try to relax!"

"Except," he spits, shaking, "I. _Can't_!" 

"I know!" she shouts back at him. "I imagine we feel kind of similar! Oh, God! Oh, God! Reality is really going to _rip_?"

He presses his face to his hands, swaying on his feet, trying to think. "Bloody hell. My entire bloody life is a catch-22 right now. I can't—"

"Breathe," Dr. Linda chimes in. "Just—"

"I _am_ breathing!" he snaps, resuming his back-and-forth journey behind her couch, adding in a softer, more tortured tone, "Bloody fucking hell; I _am_ breathing."

She bites her nails, watching him, which doesn't help at all. "Should I take Charlie on a cruise or something?" she asks anxiously around her shaking hands. "Would reality rip less over the Pacific where there's fewer people? I—"

"What about"—he points at her, snapping his fingers, "what about the bloody stress inoculation thing you mentioned. Exposing myself to my trauma in the least threatening way."

She cocks her head, lips parting a little. "You were listening to that?"

" _Yes_!" he says. "What about—"

"Lucifer, that's like step four-seventy-eight, and you're on, like, two. And that's more about helping you respond better to triggers you encounter in everyday life, not forcing your memories to—"

"But if I respond better to being a slave, which is certainly my biggest trigger," he replies, brightening, "then I'm more relaxed, yes? And if I'm more relaxed—"

"Lucifer, no. _No_. This is not what I—"

"I wonder if the Detective kept the chains I arrived in," he muses. 

"They were still on the floor when—" She shakes her head vigorously. "No. Oh, no. No, no, no. This is a terrible idea, Lucifer. You can't—"

"Thank you, Doctor," he says, bringing out his wings. The feathers snap and stretch wide, the balmy air fingering through all the filaments. "Your input has been invaluable."

"Lucifer, no!" She stomps her foot. "CEASE AND DESIS—"

But he's already flying, out the door, tagged by tendrils of frigid stratus clouds as he zips away. His grin hurts his face. There's a way out within reach. It's his for the taking. And hope is, as they say, the thing with feathers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are TWO chapters being posted today. Be sure not to miss the next one!


	37. "No spoons"

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

_Lucifer,_ she prays as John grouses, "Typical." _Lucifer, where are you going?_ "Bloody typical. Showboating _arsehole_."

Maze scoffs. "Tell me about it. How come _I_ never get to pick when we show people?"

"Ohhh, boy," Ella adds in a dreading tone, her voice trailing away. "Ohhh, man." She shifts out of her chair, lowering herself to the floor. "Hey, um, Dan, I—"

"Just leave me the fuck alone," Dan bellows, like a snarling fox caught in a trap.

"But—"

"Leave me the fuck alone!"

Chloe and Ella exchange stressed glances. Dan didn't fucking need this. _Chloe_ didn't fucking need this either. She takes a breath, steeling herself, but the muscle behind her right eye won't stop jumping. "Right. Why don't we go outside, so Dan can"—sit in the conference room, stew, and make everything feel worse—"process for a few minutes or …." Fuck. _Fuuuck._ She can only hope Dan doesn't cope as badly as she had. Jesus Christ, why _now_? The phone in her pocket vibrates. Lucifer, maybe. Answering her. Well, he can fucking wait. She pulls her fingers through her hair. "Let's just go outside, yeah?"

* * *

Her phone vibrates again, this time from an incoming call. "You really can't do anything at all?" Ella asks as soon as Chloe closes the door behind them, leaving Dan alone inside, and them in the now bustling bullpen.

John gives them a grave look. "I suppose I can try a few things." He seems more relaxed—less haughty—without Lucifer around to push his buttons. Like a peacock, or something. No desire to show off when there's no competition. "Do you know of any local hauntings? Or am I traipsing all the way back to Cleveland?"

"We've found two so far," Chloe replies tiredly. "Lucifer calmed them, so they're not dangerous to bystanders, but they're still there as far as I know."

"He really just left them where they stood?"

"What the hell else was he supposed to do?" she snaps, as her remaining rope frays to fibrous bits. "He can't go to Hell, and he's locked out of Heaven."

John opens his mouth, but then seems to think better of replying. "I'll look into things," he says gruffly instead, "but don't get your hopes up." He looks away, like … for all his white-knight complex, he doesn't enjoy being regarded as the savior. "This really sounds like a metaphysical problem, not a magical one. Something about Lucifer not presiding in Hell." He stuffs his hands into his pockets. "I'll stay in the area for a bit, regardless, in case you have more questions about your little SNAFU."

"That's"—unexpected—"nice of you, thanks." 

"What SNAFU?" asks Ella. "Why can't Lucifer go to Hell?"

"Yeah, _what_ SNAFU?" Maze echoes, her eyes gleaming with mischief. Like she wants to whip out buttered popcorn for another Revelation.

"Can we please not?" Chloe begs, remembering her phone. "Please?" Idly, she pulls out the device. Two notifications from Lucifer sprawl across her bright screen. A call and a text. The text makes her fingers clench around the device. Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuck this day. _Oh,_ she types quickly. _I'm sorry_. Before slipping her phone into her pocket again. "Listen," she says to John. "Let me get you the addresses, so you can check them out."

"Right," he says. "And you've my business card, then? In case you need to contact me?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"But … what SNAFU?" Ella presses, following them to Chloe's desk. "There's more SNAFU than the world ending?"

"Yeah, Ella, there is," Chloe says, sinking. "There _is_ more SNAFU, but it's personal—it's not even my secret to tell—and I really, _really_ cannot handle talking about it right now anyway."

John, thankfully, stays silent.

The iPad Chloe gave Lucifer rests on her desk, the nearest strip of fluorescent light reflecting against the screen. No wonder he seemed extra irked about being forced by her prayer. He didn't have an out. God, damn it. 

Sniffling, she scribbles down the address of the taco-shop-alley ghost in Central LA, and the derelict house in West Adams where Alastor Blackthorn isn't resting. "Here," she says, handing John the note. "The addresses."

He stuffs the paper into his front duster pocket. "I'll be around," he mentions again before departing.

"No spoons left, huh," Ella says over Chloe's shoulder.

Chloe turns. "What does that mean?" 

Ella doesn't explain, only sighs and adds, "Oh, just bring 'er here." And then Ella's crushing Chloe like a vise. A warm, soft, pleasant vise that smells of argan oil. 

"Why don't I ever get hugs?" Maze asks, frowning.

"Cuz you're prickly," Ella replies, "you kinda scare me, and the only time you ever asked for one, it was just to steal my keycard."

"Oh. Cool."

"Do you _want_ a hug?" 

"Not really. Looks constricting."

Chloe snorts, some of her frustration melting. Life in a nutshell since Lucifer sashayed into it: interesting characters with interesting quirks. A bright side, at least. Her life is fuller. Richer. And her days are never dull. "Thanks, Maze."

"For what? I'm not hugging you."

"Just … never change. Okay?" She pulls Ella closer, reciprocating. "And thank you, too."

* * *

Minutes later, the conference room is dark and quiet when Chloe peeks in. Dan had taken up a seat at the head of the table, resting his forehead in the cradle of his arms. The green jacket hugging his upper body makes him look like a turtle shelling up until danger passes.

"Hey, it's me," she says softly, rapping her knuckles on the doorframe to alert him. "Do you need anything? Water, or …?"

He looks up blearily, his new crucifix dragging against the table, and squints at her. "No." 

She steps fully into the room, closing the door behind her, and sits beside him. "Look, I know this is … a lot. Like, a _lot,_ a lot. And being overwhelmed is natural, but—"

"Chloe, I knew."

"Er … what?" 

"I _thought_ I knew," he amends as he scrubs slowly at his face, stubble rasping against skin. He seems old. Almost as ancient as Lucifer has seemed lately. "I've seen him do too much weird shit. We found feathers around the scene where Pierce's body was found. Feathers that didn't match a known species. You ran. Nothing added up. And then suddenly, there's fucking _ghosts_ , too? I mean, Jesus."

"So, the ghost hunting with Ella is what tipped you over?"

"The Pierce thing did. That crime scene was wild. You know how many slugs we found?"

"Um. Lots?"

"Hundreds. Like it was a fucking gang war. And then the whole case got shut down like it never was." He snaps his fingers. "Like that. I asked him what the fuck was going on, and he said, and I quote"—he deepens his voice, switching to a poor approximation of a British accent—"'Daniel, Daniel, a deal with the Devil is the world's most potent currency, and I've spent quite a lot of capital today. Leave me be.'"

Whoa.

"I … I didn't know," she murmurs. The few days she'd hung around after Pierce's death were a blur she hardly remembers. Once she'd returned from the Vatican, she'd never asked Lucifer—or anyone—what had happened, never sought details. She hadn't wanted to. Was Lucifer the reason she'd never been subjected to more than cursory questioning? Was he the reason she'd been allowed to leave the country in the first place? What awful irony, that she'd used the time away to conspire against him. God. "I didn't know." 

"It was just too weird, after too many years of too weird," Dan continues, "so, yeah, I knew. I guess I just … hoped I was wrong. Mostly believing is"—he shudders like Death herself stroked his spine—"a lot fucking different than actually seeing." 

"Yeah."

"That's when you found out, too, right? The Pierce thing?"

"Um. Yeah."

Dan rubs the bridge of his nose with steepled fingers, like he wishes he could rip out his sinuses. "Charlotte"—his voice breaks a little on her name—"used to have these awful dreams. About going to Hell."

"Oh, Dan. She isn't in—"

"I know. Amenadiel told me."

"Then …?"

He peers at her with his bloodshot, tired eyes, his hands shaking. "Chloe, I've done things. Bad things. Things you don't know about."

"Dan—" 

"The more I yelled at him, tried to provoke him, the more he didn't … _do_ anything to me. I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was safe." Like a child testing boundaries. "But then … what I saw this weekend." His lower lip trembles. "Chloe, it's _bad_. It's real bad."

She remembers the way her gut had churned when Lucifer had explained exactly what the smell and the cold and the noise _meant_. A de-gloved soul. "I know." 

"Do you think it could really be the end?" 

"I don't know _what_ to think. Lucifer is convinced something is wrong, but there's a lot of wiggle room between wrong and apocalypse." Chloe shakes her head. "Then again, this is, like, … _way_ out of my depth." Might as well try swimming across the Pacific with nothing but Trixie's old arm floaties.

Dread haunts Dan's expression, as though he's imagining himself as one of those displaced, tormented souls. Pushing her chair away with the backs of her knees, she raises her arms. He takes her offer immediately, mirroring her. 

They embrace.

He's taut with stress, and he clings to her more like she's a teddy bear than a person. 

"Is he really sick like you said?" Dan asks, his face buried in her hair.

"Huh?"

"Lucifer. When I first found out he was back, you said he was sick. Or was that a cover for something else?"

Oh. Oh, right. "He's not sick with a bug. But for all intents and purposes, yeah, he's sick. We think it's all connected."

"Is that why he finally snapped at me?"

"I think so."

"I wish I could just … forget everything," Dan says plaintively. "I wish I could have one fucking second where I'm free from all this … _noise_. My life's been a shitpile ever since Malcolm. I've made awful choices. Over, and over."

"Hey," she soothes, rubbing his back. "Hey, it's okay."

"It's _not_ okay!" he insists, pulling away to pace and worry and froth. "Don't you get it? I'm going to _Hell_. Soon, if the world is really as fucked as it seems."

"That's not set in stone. You can't think like that."

"Chloe, please, I just pissed off Satan!"

"You don't go to Hell because the Devil's ticked at you—that's not how it works."

Dan pauses, frowning intensely. "He's told you how it works?"

"Yes! He tells me anything I want to know." And Dan's desire to punish himself for perceived misdeeds is far more troublesome than Lucifer being mad. "You should talk to him about it."

"Yeah"—Dan scoffs—"I'm sure he wants to hear from me."

"He doesn't hold grudges. If you apologize, that's it. That's the end of it with him."

"Right."

"It's _true_ ," she maintains. "He's forgiven me for … awful things."

Another scoff. "Like you could do anything actually awful."

"I did some things that nearly got him killed." Her eyes prickle as the grief she'd stuffed down earlier returns like a cyclical tide. _Love, he's an archangel,_ John had said. _There's very little terrestrial magic that would even make a dent in him, let alone force him to leave._ " _I_ nearly killed him," she admits, shamed.

Dan laughs. 

She folds her arms.

"Wait, you're serious?" he says.

"Yes."

"How the hell do you kill the fucking Devil when a million bullets won't?"

She opens her mouth to reply—

"Wait, no. Don't tell me." He rubs his eyes again. "I already have a fucking headache."

"I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" he asks.

"I love you," she replies with a shrug. "When you hurt, I hurt."

He pauses by the window with a deep, affected sigh, his broad shoulders flinching with the movement. She winds around the table, closing the gap between them to stand beside him. Cars swish by on the sunny street. A palm tree sways, leaves susurrating in the breeze, sheltering a lone pedestrian toting grocery bags. Hard to believe she might be staring at the End.

"Why the hell do you like him so much?" Dan asks. "Why …?"

The question seems more plaintive than judging. More hypothetical than actual. Like he wants some reason—any reason—to believe. Her heart aches. 

"Talk to Lucifer, yeah?" she tells Dan softly. "He helped Charlotte."

"He … did?"

"Yeah. He did." She wraps an arm around Dan's waist and kisses his shoulder through his shirt. "Maybe he can help you, too. Both him and Amenadiel." If they ever _find_ Amenadiel.

"Oh, God. Amenadiel's an angel, too."

She smiles faintly. "Yup."

"Last time he was gone for a while, he told me they didn't have phones where he'd been." 

_"Yuuup_ ," she adds with more gravity.

Dan makes a small spluttering noise as he puts the rest of the pieces together. "Is … that where he is now? Heaven?"

"We don't know. Lucifer thinks his disappearance is connected to whatever's happening, too."

Dan slumps. "Okay, yeah. Yeah, I _definitely_ have a headache."

"Well, hey," she replies softly, her smile stretching wider as she bumps his hip with hers, "you're doing a lot better than I did at first."

He snorts.

"Do you want me to take Trixie tonight? So you have some space to"—she makes a vague gesture—"think?"

"No, I kinda want her around even more now."

"Yeah." She nods. "Yeah, I get that. So, what else can I do?"

He thinks for a moment before turning to her. "Why don't you tell me about your current case? Maybe I can help."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure I need to think of something else besides the world ending."

God, so does she.

"Okay." Some of the weight pressing down on her lifts. "Deal." 

* * *

Ella pores over the paperwork while Dan reads over her shoulder. Maze, despite having nothing case-related to do, had commandeered the desk behind Chloe's, kicking back to rest her boots on the paper pile in the inbox, while she ponders the ceiling with a bored expression. 

"So, what do you think?" Chloe asks tensely. "Can you get anything?"

"The iPad's definitely a dead end," Ella muses, looking up briefly with a grimace, "unless you want to wait, like, forty-odd years for us to try all the PIN codes."

"Not really."

"Didn't think so."

"But the video feeds from USC?" Chloe prods. "The e-mails?"

Ella flips a page, reading. "I think I can get the video figured out. Gimme a few hours." 

"Thanks, I'll take whatever help I can get."

"I'll finish the subpoena for the phone records and take it to the courthouse," Dan volunteers. "Start looking through the video when I get back, if it's ready."

"And—"

"And you," Ella says, dragging out the u for several singsong syllables as she rises from Chloe's chair, "are gonna chase after our grumpy Devil guy now, right?"

Chloe's chest tightens. Once John had left, she'd been doing a good job at relegating Lucifer to the growing pile of "later" in the back of her brain. "I don't know if I should."

"Duh! Of course you should."

"But he left," Chloe says. And he's free to return, but he hasn't, not that she blames him. He'd been through the wringer today—stripped naked, robbed of hope, judged by an old flame, accosted by a former friend. At least, he's not forced to linger anymore. Which … makes his decision to stick around and traumatize Dan all the more infuriating. Why hadn't he just left? And how can she be such an intense nexus of pissed and sympathetic simultaneously? Lucifer Morningstar is confounding. "If he wants to be alone, who am I to—"

"You're the Detective. Obvs," Ella says, shrugging. "And I think he was running away from the angry pitchforks—"

Dan clears his throat, hunching his shoulders and refusing to look up from the case folder.

"—not you."

"You don't know what's been going on lately," Chloe insists.

"I know he needed fixing by a guy who claims to be an exorcist. I know John is throwing around acronyms like SNAFU, and Lucifer is calling himself trapped, and you're saying he can't go to Hell." She makes a face. "Seriously, was that a metaphor, or …?"

"Not a metaphor."

"Oh," Ella says, her eyes widening. "Is that what John was supposed to fix?"

"Something like that, yeah." 

"That seems … bad."

"It _is_ bad," Chloe agrees, a lump forming in her throat. "Saturday was awful. _Today_ is awful." Everything feels like it's unraveling. 

"And doesn't that just make you wanna snuggle your Devil beau for comfort?" Ella asks with a hopeful expression.

Which … okay, point.

"Can't hurt to check in, right?" Ella prods. "Particularly after a cruddy day?"

"Are you matchmaking," Dan says with a soft snort, "or are you actually trying to help them?"

"… Both?" 

"You guys are really okay without me?" Chloe asks doubtfully.

"Yup. I'm good on Dan duty."

"Hey, I don't need a babysitter, okay?" Dan slaps the case folder against the desk as he drops it over Chloe's keyboard. "I'm fine. I already knew. I was just surprised."

"Dude, who said anything about babysitting?" Ella snaps back at him. "Maybe _I_ need a friend. Huh?" She pokes him in the chest with an outstretched index finger. "Didja think about that? Huh?" 

The defiance bleeds out of Dan's expression.

"The world is endingin ghost-palooza," Ella continues, "and the Devil is SNAFU-trapped, and all _we_ can do about it is solve a freaking murder that already happened." She turns to Chloe, her finger still jabbed against Dan's left pectoral. Dan takes her hand and gently squeezes it. Her fingers curl absently over his palm. "That _is_ all we can do, right?"

"I don't know," Chloe says, looking at the floor. "I feel helpless, too." More and more, lately.

"Well, I hope John can do something," Ella decides. "Or Lucifer. Or … anyone." She steeples her hands, tips her head back, and closes her eyes. "Aaanyone up there wanna take a stab at saving the world today? Please?"

Two spiked heels strike the tiled floor as Maze stands up, stretching. "Whatever," she says in a bored tone. "I'm headed to Linda's."

Where Lucifer had gone. "Can I catch a ride with you?" Chloe asks, adding, "You guys are _sure_ you're okay without me?"

"Yes," says Ella in a long suffering tone.

"Go," adds Dan, waving her off.

Chloe grabs her purse. 

"Got my bike today," Maze says, eyeing her. "Let's take your ride."

"How the hell did you kidnap John across ten states on a motorcycle?" Chloe asks.

Maze can only offer a secret smile as she slinks toward the exit to the parking garage.

* * *

They're not even buckled in before Linda calls, warning Chloe, "Lucifer left. You might want to check on him." Her tone is low-pitched, gritted out, I'm-not-remotely-calm-but-I-want-you-to-believe-I-am. Something Chloe hears all the time in interrogations, which leaves her to interpret the sentence as, _Oh, God. Oh, God. Lucifer left, and I'm pretty sure he's about to do something self-destructive and stupid like always, but I don't want to violate doctor-patient confidentiality, but also he's my friend. Help meee!_

"O … kay," Maze says as she releases her seatbelt, and it rolls back into the dispenser with a snap. "Guess I'm driving myself."

"Unless you wanna help me with Lucifer?" Chloe asks, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Maze barks out a laugh.

"Sorry!" Chloe calls as the passenger door on Maze's side opens.

"Yeah, whatever. Seeya."

The vehicle wobbles, and Maze slams the door shut behind her, not angrily so much as frivolously, before clomping toward the compact-car rows where her bike is parked. Chloe pulls out of her designated space, struggling to obey the meager speed limit as she winds her way down to the exit. Her fingers worry and strain at the wheel. Her teeth clench. 

With both her phones and the iPad, she has no way of contacting him without praying. Where to go? She figures she'll check home first and worry from there.

She curses softly as she pulls into stark daylight, realizing she's misplaced her sunglasses somewhere. She curses softly again when a bumper-to-bumper mess traps her before she's even reached the highway. She curses softly another time at the construction crews and their jackhammers and their noisy beep-beep-beeps; and another at the asshole driving the pickup truck that cuts her off; and finally at a person weaving drunkenly on foot between cars, grabbing onto bumpers and slapping car hoods, caterwauling about random things.

She's a pot, simmering on the stove, until she pulls onto the highway. The pavement roars underneath her, smothering all but the noise in her head. She's driving 69 mph, exactly the speed limit plus four, when the heat bubbles over, and she finally lets out a primal, cleansing scream.

And then another.

And another.

* * *

Nobody rushes to answer the door or greet her. The downstairs is empty, quiet, but— She snatches her gun from her holster, her body tensing at the disheveled state of the living room and kitchen. Her furniture is moved. Every cabinet and drawer is hanging open. The slider is shoved back on its tracks, left gaping for the breeze and bugs. The sheer drapery billows with the influx of air.

"LAPD," she shouts. "I'm armed!"

"Detective?" calls Lucifer from somewhere upstairs.

"I think I've been robbed!"

"What?" he asks, the word racing down the steps. The "why?" that follows beside her ear makes her jump. At least, her finger is off the trigger, and she doesn't shoot him in the heart—he's lucky she's damned well trained. "What's been taken?" 

She gestures at the mess.

"Oh, that," he says. Like "that" is hardly noteworthy. "Yes, I did that."

"Why?" she grits out.

"I was looking for the chains you said I arrived in." 

" _Why_?" she repeats in a lower tone.

He glances at the mess. And then at her. And then at her gun. And then back at her. His dark eyes soften. "Detective, I'd no intention to upset you. I'd hoped to have it all picked up again before you returned. Your shift's not over for several hours, yes?"

Oh.

"I thought …." With a shaky breath, she re-holsters her pistol. Her eyes pinch out hot tears. "I thought …."

"I'm sorry," he says. No stiff, formal, _you've my apologies_ for her. "Truly." 

"I thought …."

He wraps his arms around her, but she shoves him back with the heel of her palm. "No. No, I thought …." She fights down a whorl of stress without much success. "I …."

"Thought what?" Lucifer asks gently.

"Linda made it sound like you'd gone off the deep end, and I just can't …." She can't even articulate herself, she's so emotionally bankrupt. Her body feels like a bag of wet cement. "I'm … really tired."

"Of course, Detective," he says, frowning at her. "Shall I make you some tea?"

"No, I …." Can't. She just can't. She shakes her head, drifting toward the steps. "No."

"How is Daniel?" he asks behind her.

_How do you think_ , she wants to snap at him, but … for all the world, he looks like Trixie had, when she'd gotten mad at a losing streak and thrown a marble from Hungry Hippos. The marble had beaned Dan in the eye, scratching his cornea. Trixie had been so beside herself with guilt, she hadn't even cried. She'd just hidden in her room and wouldn't eat. She'd also never ever lashed out like that again. Lesson learned. 

"Not as bad as I thought he'd be," Chloe replies. "He already knew, apparently."

Lucifer brightens. "Really?"

"Yeah, really," she says. 

He doesn't follow as she thumps up the steps. Doesn't follow as she closes the door behind herself and strips out of her jacket and gun holster. 

Her bedroom is chaos like the living room. He'd been through every drawer. Pulled the contents from her closet. The chains in question lie in an iron tangle across the messy bed, having eventually been found.

She shoves the thick links off the bed, wincing at the metallic-colored stains they leave on her comforter, but … she can't even care. She pulls the covers over her body, cocooning herself.

"Detective," he says hesitantly, his voice muffled through the wood, "are you certain there isn't anything I can do for you? I'll pick up the mess, of course. I admit, I'm a bit …." Whatever he's "a bit," though, he doesn't say, sighing instead.

She hugs a pillow to her chest. 

"Will you just hold me, please?" she requests softly. "Only if you want."

The door creaks open, and he pads across the rug. Clothing rustles. A belt buckle clinks. His side of the mattress dips, but then he freezes.

"What is it?" she says.

"I went commando today."

"Oh."

The mattress springs back into place as he stands. "Not to worry. I'll be right b—"

"I don't care," she blurts.

"About what?"

She squeezes her eyes shut. "I don't care if you're naked. Please, just …." She swallows. "Please. If you want."

He scoots behind her, spooning her, and drapes one arm over her hip, the other becoming her pillow. His bare skin is hot, radiating, pressing against her from her neck to the tips of her toes. 

"Thanks," she says.

Snuggling her Devil "beau."

And then she sleeps.


	38. "You might know him as Rasputin"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another double chapter post today! Hope you guys enjoy :)

Lucifer follows Lilith at a distance, trying to suss out her machinations. She roams Strife until the flesh on the soles of her feet is cleaved to bone, then stops, waiting with a dead-eyed expression while she heals, only to begin again. Her aimless, repetitive movements remind him of a prisoner in solitary confinement, tortured by their aloneness until their mind gives way. He'd had no idea his interactions with her represented the lion's share of her lucidity. No idea she was ill beyond a shattered sense of morality.

"She didn't used to be like this," he explains to Mr. Lawson as they watch from the ashy, choking sky. "She was delightfully contrary, but never evil. Never _broken_." 

They'd been equally scorned. Equally exiled. Equally discarded by God for the sins of pride and will. Kindred.

 _Got you, too, did he?_ she'd said, a sad smile quirking her lips. _Pity. I'd hoped you'd win._

He'd been too raw to reply. Too burned. Literally. Figuratively. She'd grabbed his scalded hand as he'd clawed for the edge of Lake Holocaust. Helped him onto shore.

 _Let me help you_ , _Samael,_ she'd said. 

And she had.

Genuinely.

When he'd healed enough to see his own flesh again—not char and marbled scarring—she'd lain beside him under a blooded, ash-stained sky, and stroked his face, leaving sooty smears on his cheek. Then her touch had drifted lower. 

_Do you not wish for more, my new king?_ she'd said.

 _No,_ he'd told her, staying her hand before it had passed his navel. 

_Think of what we could do together._ Be _together._

_No. This place is filthy. I'll not stain myself with it._

_Then we needn't be lovers. My children could be your army. We could fight for your—_

_No_ , he'd repeated quietly. _I am finished._

Lilith had shrugged. Pulled away. _Your loss, my king,_ she'd said without bite. _You'll let me know if you change your mind?_

And that had been the end of it, for a time.

A long time.

Lucifer, too involved with his own purgatory, had left her alone to suffer in hers. 

"Perhaps I should take her to Earth," he muses. "Perhaps, she'd …." Heal. His hope rings false the moment he almost speaks it. Cain had wandered Earth far less time than Lilith had wandered Hell, yet he'd shown similar signs of morality decay. "Bloody hell. Humans simply aren't _designed_ for this kind of eternity. At least here her options for destruction are limited." 

"There some other way to help her?" asks Mr. Lawson.

"Beyond ascertaining how to put her out of her bloody misery, I've no idea."

"How _do_ ya kill her?"

"With Cain, the answer was vulnerability through love, but she's perhaps too far gone for that, even considering Cain's warped, wrong ideas about affection. She's too bloody mean now." Hateful. Twisted. 

"Y'can't just smite her to bits?"

 _Please,_ she'd begged him once, long ago. _Please, end me, my king. I can feel it slipping, and it scares me._

 _It?_ he'd asked. _What is it?_

_Whatever makes me me._

His throat constricts. "I tried. She'll regenerate with even less of herself intact than she had before." 

They watch her meander, until, at last, purpose inflects her trajectory, and she descends into the Rows, sliding and slipping down the Cliffs, weaving around the Screaming vents as she's battered by wailing wind. When she lands, Lucifer perches on the pillar above, folding his wings, Mr. Lawson cradled in his arms. She roams below, a deep layer of ash staining her feet and ankles black. At first, Lucifer wonders if he's witnessing more aimless, empty-brained drifting. Until she stops at a door. A very particular door the demons have kept free of obstruction. One of their favorite playgrounds.

"Grigori?" Lucifer says, frowning as she slips through the entrance and disappears. "What the bloody me is she doing visiting Grigori?"

Mr. Lawson inches toward the edge of the pillar, though Lucifer blocks him with an outstretched hand. The fall wouldn't harm him—he isn't corporeal—but the beachball-sized soul falling into Death's Rows like a meteor would certainly inform Lilith she's being followed.

"Who's Grigori?" Mr. Lawson asks.

"You might know him as Rasputin." 

"Like … _the_ Rasputin?"

"Yes, do keep up, will you?" Lucifer huffs. 

Alive, Rasputin had been a dangerous man. Dead, he's too preoccupied with his own mistakes to look beyond his cell. Same as the countless guilty multitudes. Or … is he? If Lucifer's proven anything with Mr. Lawson, it's that external influence could jog people loose from their loops. 

Lucifer shudders to think what kind of external influence Lilith might provide. 

"Has she ever visited a soul before?" Mr. Lawson asks.

"I've … no idea," Lucifer admits, a sinking feeling in his gut. "I've never been interested enough to follow her."

"She's corruptin' him, maybe? So you can't fix him when ya try?"

Perhaps. "But why would she start with _him_?" Lucifer furrows his brow. "He's not the first on my list after you. He's not even top-ten material."

They watch the door. Lilith doesn't emerge.

"Was he really some kinda freaky cultist?" Mr. Lawson asks.

"He was a warlock, not a cultist." 

"A warlock like …?"

"Magic, yes; specifically, he was a specialist in necromancy." Lucifer laughs at the scandalized "look" Mr. Lawson is giving him. "Oh, come now. You're a disembodied soul 'talking' with the Devil in Hell; how can necromancy be a surprise, of all things?"

Mr. Lawson regards him sheepishly. "I guess it ain't."

They watch, and watch, and watch. Lucifer's headache blooms again like a flower in spring, surging and riotous and red. Lilith does not reappear. 

"Say, have you thought more of going to the Gates?" Lucifer prods softly as he rubs his temples.

"Soon, I think," Mr. Lawson says, the words tinged with sadness. "Thank you for … for …." Emotion, thick and sticky and strangling like swallowing too much peanut butter, clogs the space between them. "Just … thanks, man. I owe ya big."

"You owe me nothing." Pain stirs in Lucifer's heart to match the stabbing in his head. "You belong where you belong, Mr. Lawson. I'll be _delighted_ when you go." Not a lie at all. Merely … one minuscule facet of a truth that includes grief. "Remember, don't stop to say goodbye. Just go. Escape while you can."

"I remember."

"Promise."

"Yeah, man. I promise."

They watch, more now for camaraderie than investigation. They watch until, at last, Lilith leaves Rasputin's Hell behind, her face painted with bloodstains—palm prints, glistening and wet. She returns to Strife to wander.

"Uh," says Mr. Lawson, "whose blood is that?"

"Must be hers," replies Lucifer. "Souls have no body to bleed, and I sense no demons here."

* * *

"Who are you talking of?" mumbles Grigori, squinting. "I know nothing of this woman."

He stands at a stone table with a lit bunsen burner, intent on grinding flaky green who-knows-what with a mortar and pestle. His palms aren't bloodstained. Nothing in the room suggests violence occurred. If anything, he looks like he'd rather be napping.

Lucifer sighs. 

Of course Grigori doesn't bloody remember. Of _course_ he doesn't. Swiss cheese for memory while trapped in a guilt construct seems to be status quo for lost souls. Grigori must have looped around—that's why Lilith had left. 

Which leaves Lucifer with a mystery.

"Have you any idea why a soul-impaired woman hellbent on destroying me would have visited your guilt shrine?" Lucifer asks. A thump follows, the mortar sliding across the table as Grigori slumps into it, snoring. Lucifer scoffs. "Wake _up_ , man." Nothing. Lucifer gives him a shake. "I said wake up!"

Grigori flinches awake, frowning. His hair hangs in greasy, neglected strings, and the bags under his eyes make him seem older than he'd been when he'd died. "Who are …?"

"Lucifer, remember?"

Grigori cocks his head. "Lucifer."

"Yes, Lucifer of the many orgies? Surely you rec—"

"Of course I recall, Old Scratch," Grigori says with a faded laugh. "Good times, we had. It was long before this dreadful place, no?"

"When you lived, yes." Lucifer steps around the table as Grigori resumes with the mortar and pestle, filling the quiet with scraping noises. "What are you concocting?"

"A tonic for Alexei. My best placebo for his bleeding."

"I see." Lucifer sniffs the warm air. The room smells of incense and rosemary and something … garlic-y? "Say, have you any recipes that might kill an angel?"

The mortar and pestle cease grinding once more. "Who would be daft enough to create such a thing? I'd sooner kill myself."

"Right," Lucifer says slowly, "well, painful employment of dramatic irony aside, that was no answer to my question."

" _Irony?_ " Grigori replies.

"You can't kill yourself. You're dead."

"I feel no death—only eternity."

Irritation boils in Lucifer's veins. "Can you hurt me, or not?"

"Why would I _try_?" Grigori counters. 

"Have you any poisons?" Lucifer continues, ignoring him. "Curses? Spells? Cross words? Mean glares? _Anything_?"

"Why do you pester me with nonsense?"

"It is not nonsense, and I _tire_ of your prevarication," Lucifer snaps, grabbing Grigori's robes, pulling him close like a lover. "Grigori Rasputin"—he allows his eyes to _burn_ —"can. You. Kill. Me?" 

Grigori stares blandly back at him. "Who could?"

"That's _my_ bloody question, Razzy."

"A mystery, hmm. I enjoyed mysteries once." 

"Well, I'm asking about _this_ mystery," Lucifer snaps. " _Now_."

But Grigori furrows his bushy eyebrows into one unified caterpillar of a line. "Who are …?" 

"Lucifer," he grits out.

"Ah, yes. Of course. Good times, we had."

Lucifer slumps as the fight bleeds out of him, his eyes fading back to brown. The trouble with necromancers. They're bloody well unflappable by sights that would have a normal human—even a normal warlock—losing control of their bowels. And this particular necromancer seems to have a few screws loose, courtesy of eternal damnation.

"Leave me, please," Grigori says, gesturing toward the door. "I'm tired."

"You _can't_ be tired," Lucifer says. "You're _dead_."

But Grigori answers, muddled, "I'll rest soon, I think. I wish for … rest." Then waves at the door again.

Lucifer turns to go with a sigh. "Bloody hell." The things the guilt-ridden torture themselves with boggle his mind sometimes.

A thump, and the fresh sound of snoring follows as he leaves.

* * *

"Anythin'?" asks Mr. Lawson as Lucifer emerges from the cell.

Helplessness screams at the edges of Lucifer's mind. "No. He was bloody useless."

He stares at the entry to Grigori Rasputin's personal Hell. Every instinct in his body blares, demanding he curtail this obvious problem before it spirals. Or is it too late?

Bloody hell. 

Though it galls him, he touches the stone and speaks a Word. Buzzing, blue glyphs—his mark—snap into place, locking Grigori in. 

Locking Lilith _out_.

"No more secret colluding for _you_ ," Lucifer decides.

"I thought ya wanted people to free themselves," says Mr. Lawson softly.

"I _do_ ," Lucifer snaps. "I'll remove the warding when this situation is rectified."

That feels like a lie. Nausea coils. Bile rises in his throat. His head is _pounding_ again. 

"Y'okay?" says Mr. Lawson.

Lucifer can only shake his head.

* * *

Time passes.

"He lets the vermin loose from their cages, but he does not free _you_!" Lilith shouts into the wind from Traitor's Noose. "How is this equitable? How is this _fair_?"

"It does not need to be fair," Lucifer booms in return. "Because I am your _king_." 

He zips to the Noose with a flash of ferocity, fanning his wings wide in a terrible display. His demons bow, whether or not they wish to, but she stands defiant, her arms folded over her chest, the delicate point of her chin jutting. 

"Disperse!" he commands, a word that is Word, and they do. They must. All but she, who is human.

He scowls, showing teeth as he whips to face her. The breeze billows her black hair. She doesn't blink. Doesn't back up. These "demonstrations" have become her modus operandi when she's lucid. 

"I will throw you into the Pit with the sociopaths," he says. "Is that what you truly desire?"

"My children would not harm me." She pads toward him, reaching to stroke his chin. "Not unless I asked them to."

He catches her wrist. "Do not touch me."

Her outstretched fingers crumple into a loose fist, the sharp tips of her nails hovering over the heel of her palm. "Apologies, my king." Her sweet smile is sickeningly coquettish. 

"I have told you to cease inciting them. I have told you more than once."

"So you have, my king." Her eyebrow arches as if to say, _How's that working out for you?_

Stress crushes the space behind his sternum. 

This will never end. 

She will _never_ stop until her brain is defunct. 

Not now that she has a taste for torturing him. 

"Come with me," he commands quietly. "Now."

Her haughty smile ices into a flat line. "You would not _dare_."

But he does dare. 

She tries and fails to pull away from him as he spreads his wings and lifts. Snarling, squirming, screaming, she fights like a wildcat the whole way back, but she may as well be a gnat caught by a hurricane. 

He is true immortal. Immovable. Endless.

And Hell is _his_ domain.

"My king," Squee calls from a distance, his tone frantic as Lucifer lands in the palace courtyard, still dragging Lilith by the wrist. Squee scampers closer. "My king, your pet has escaped!"

"Mr. Lawson is not my _pet,_ Squee," Lucifer grits out, exasperated. "He cannot 'escape' because he wasn't bloody imprisoned." The first few times Mr. Lawson had gone to explore, Squee had raised the alarm—practically had the whole demonic populace sharpening their spears as though Paris had absconded with Helen of Troy. "How many times must we go over this?"

"Yes. Yes, of course, my king." Squee nods so fast it's a wonder he doesn't suffer brain injury. "I should have said wandered. Your pet has wandered."

"He is not. My pet."

"Regardless, my king, he is _gone_." Squee looks up at Lucifer with pleading, terrified eyes.

"Where have you searched?" 

"High and low, my king. Near and far. Through all of Death's Rows, in the Pit, up the Cliffs, across Strife and Discord, into every Quarry cave. We've turned every stone. Searched every crevice. All but dredged the Rivers Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Lethe. We were planning an expedition to Mired Meadows next, with your approval."

Hope burgeons. "I don't suppose you've checked the Gates?"

"Of course, but there was no sign of him, sire."

Hmm. Lucifer closes his eyes, tipping his gaze toward the black sky. _Azrael,_ he prays. _Azrael, tell me, have you picked up Mr. Lawson?_

No response. 

The hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He opens his eyes to slits. Squee's claws tap against the volcanic glass at his feet. But Lilith. Her triumphant, secret smile makes his stomach turn.

He drags her closer. Her bare feet slice on the glass, leaving streaks of blood. She doesn't even wince.

"Have _you_ something to do with this?" he asks her.

Her amused expression deepens. "With what?"

"Lilith, do not try my patience."

"Refrain from locking me up, and perhaps I won't."

The urge to summon a pillar of hellfire onto her head hits him like Vesuvius, turning his insides to magma. Heat funnels through his chest. Incinerates his mind. Scalds his muscles. 

But he will not. 

He will _not_.

Shuddering, he forces his temper behind a wall of ash. 

Mr. Lawson is fine. Gone to Heaven without saying goodbye. Exactly as Lucifer has been insisting he do for _ages_. Humans, demons, anyone but angels—they have no means to interact with souls outside their cells unless they're in the Pit, and Mr. Lawson would never go to the Pit. Lilith is goading Lucifer for sport because that's what she does. 

"Come with me," he snaps again, not giving Lilith the option to refuse. " _Now_."

He dumps her into the dark, dank dungeon below the palace, where he keeps his occasional "problems." She kicks up ash and bone dust and sand as he swings the wrought-iron cage door shut, its metal hinges screeching like the damned.

"You will regret this," she seethes, rattling the door of her cage as he locks it with his Skeleton Key. "I will _make_ you regret."

He aches. "I've no wish to do this. You'd be in the Pit if I did."

" _Liar_ ," she almost hisses, pressing her naked, sinuous body against the bars.

"I don't lie."

"You claim you desire free will, and yet you take what little freedom I have left."

"Lilith, if you can behave for a time, I _will_ set you loose again. Sooner, rather than later. But I cannot abide your repeated rebellions now, not when change for the better is a barely budded rose."

"This is not _better_. Your treatment of the vermin is an _abomination_."

"I disagree."

With a sneer, she spits on him. 

He wipes the glob from his face with an outstretched finger. "Shall I gag you now," he asks dispassionately, "or will you do me the courtesy of not screaming."

"You _will_ regret this, Samael. The wheels are already in motion."

"Do not call me that," he tells her, pocketing his key. "It is not my name." 

He glances at the other cells, all empty for once. He's stopped this before his demons have grown too bold, too wavering in their devotion. But that means she'll be alone, even more so than she already is. 

She directs a furtive look behind her, her eyes watering as if she's just realized this as well. Her lower lip quivers, and her dark eyes glisten. "Please, don't leave me here," she says in a small voice. "Please."

"Lilith."

"P-please. I'll stop. I'll behave."

The sudden injection of humanity into her tone coils in his gut, wrong and writhing. Perhaps, he has misjudged. He takes a step toward her. Perhaps, she—

She rises to her tiptoes, pressing her mouth between the bars and wrapping her arms around him. Her nails dig into the nape of his neck, scrunching up a tuft of his hair as she kisses him, trying to pull him closer. She tastes vile. Sparks like electricity pass between them. The room spins. He stumbles, a startled sound catching in his throat before he staggers away, his strength eclipsing hers with little effort. 

"Lilith, _no_!" 

She cocks her head, licking her lip suggestively like she enjoys the taste of him. "Thought I'd seal us with a kiss."

"I have said no. Many bloody times."

She offers him a frigid grin. "Your loss, my king."

"I'll check on you later."

"Fuck you," she says sweetly. 

He turns away. 

"I destroyed the vermin, you know," she taunts as he departs. "Snuffed it out. Used the power in its soul to hurt you."

Lucifer stills. "Stop."

"I _told_ you, you should not love. I _told_ you, it never ends well."

"I will not rise to this."

Her sick, empty smile widens. "Enjoy your victory while it lasts. I give it an hour." 

His chest feels tight with uncertainty as he flies away. He hangs his key on the hook behind his Greater Throne, high in the swirling gloom. Change hurts. It's _difficult_. He knows that from his time on Earth. And, yet …. 

"Y'okay, man?" Mr. Lawson doesn't ask when Lucifer returns to his chambers, because Mr. Lawson isn't here.

The room spins. 

Lucifer stumbles, catching himself on the balcony railing. _Is_ there magic that consumes human souls for fuel? He's never heard of such a thing, not even from warlocks of Grigori's caliber—not that Grigori would be fool enough to admit such an abomination, were he to invent one.

Blackness carpets his field of view. He takes a rickety breath. The air, tinged with familiar brimstone, at least suffocates him in familiar ways. He flounders to his bed.

Another bloody migraine. 

He speaks the Word to raise his wards again. He is safe now. Unassailable. Grigori is contained. Lilith is contained. Mr. Lawson is _fine_. 

Hell will still be Hell when Lucifer wakes.

 _Samael,_ he thinks he hears, a whispered prayer, growing louder. _Samaaael, are you mine now?_ He pulls a pillow over his head, trying not to vomit. _Samael?_

He's gifted pleasant darkness for less than a breath, and then the world flares lucid white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO chapters today. Don't miss the next one!


	39. "Team Good. Ish."

She has a bad dream. Lucifer is her slave to tote around until she dies. He's always close, but they can't have a real relationship because yikes. She eventually gets dementia, and they're chased by a talking hotdog down Hollywood Boulevard. The hot dog's just about to absorb her into its bun like an amoeba when she flinches awake.

Lucifer's wrapped around her, muttering softly against her neck, his whole body twitching in the grips of some lurid dream. The sun has set, and the clock indicates about four hours have passed since she crashed. She feels … better. Less like an imminent nuclear meltdown—more like a human capable of processing things.

"Lucifer," she murmurs, patting his hand. "Lucifer, nightmare. Wake up." 

His arms stiffen briefly before relaxing again. She kisses his knuckles. His fingers flex.

"Oh, I fell asleep," he mumbles thickly.

"Yeah. Me, too. You okay?"

"I'm … awake."

"I'm sorry for earlier," she says.

"What for?" he replies. "Being tired?"

She flips onto her other side. The sky beyond his head, visible through the window, is a deep shade of indigo, not yet the normal nighttime purple. "Things just got to be a big ball of too much, I guess," she tells him, running her hand along his bicep. "But you had a bad day, too, and I didn't …." Care.

She hadn't cared one bit by the end.

"Today was … trying," he agrees.

"Yeah."

"For what it's worth, I regret my part in your big ball."

She snorts. "It's fine. I'm fine now." Mostly. Enough to have a conversation. "I'm sorry I prayed at you. Didn't mean to send you into a tailspin."

An odd expression twists his features. "Don't let that stop you from praying in the future. Should you need to get in touch with me, by all means. This instance was merely …."

"A bad time?"

"A bad time," he echoes. "Yes. And laced inconveniently with compulsion."

Which she can avoid now that she knows it happens. Some of the crushing weight lifts.

"So, what werethe chains about, anyway?" she asks.

"… Chains?"

"The ones you left on my bed?"

"Oh." He drags his thumb over the ridge of her cheek, stroking her face. "Yes, I was going to ask you to chain me up."

"What."

He rolls onto his back. "I thought they might help me remember—figure out what to bloody do—but once I found them, I realized …." He trails away.

She scoots closer. "Realized what?"

"I haven't got the stomach for it."

"Memories?" she asks softly. 

"Seeing them makes me feel as though the walls are becoming my coffin," he confesses. "Perish the thought of actually wearing the bloody things. And I _still_ haven't got any bloody idea what to do."

She presses her forehead against his arm, breathing against his skin. He seems to be having more and more flashes of recollection. "We'll figure it out."

" _How?_ What solution can there be when I'm trapped here?"

She doesn't know. Can't answer. 

"I thought she was contained, you know," he continues distantly. "I thought …." He shakes his head. "But then she prayed to me. Forced me to bring her the key."

"What key?" 

"I'd locked her up just before."

Chloe closes her eyes.

"She led me to my throne room," he adds, monotone. "Stripped me of my garments—took my feathers. I couldn't move, let alone stop her. They all watched and laughed."

All of his triggers. All of them. Labeled, categorized, and explained like a list for an encyclopedia. 

"After that, I …." He pauses, clearly at a loss. "Nothing. There's _nothing_. What the bloody hell am I forgetting? If I can remember _that—_ humiliation, violation, desolation, helplessness—then what? What's left?"

"Lucifer, I …." What the hell to even say? 

_I'm sorry that happened to you_ sounds so fucking stupid. Considering the magnitude. And the fact everything he's saying seems to have an ominous, unspoken, _but that wasn't the worst bit,_ tacked on. Who the hell just says sorry to that? 

He picks up her hand. Sandwiches it between his palms. Little tremors make his fingers shake. "I feel as though I'm suffocating."

A sliding glacier replaces her insides. She can't reassure him. He'd hear the lie. 

"We just need time to brainstorm," she murmurs. "We'll figure it out."

"How can you be so bloody certain?"

"I'm not, but what's the alternative?" she asks. "Give up? Just … live like this? For however long the world is gonna last for us to live in?"

He doesn't reply.

She snuggles against him, resting her head on his shoulder. 

"Perhaps … I should attempt to calm them, after all," he muses idly. "Ms. Lopez's list of souls. Perhaps I should."

"Might buy us more time."

He scoffs. "Or it might prolong the inevitable."

"Isn't that good? Not an order, but I really don't want the world to end."

"Hmm." 

They listen to the distant sounds of traffic. Someone in the apartment complex slams a door, the noise reverberating. Another person sings softly in the night. _Cielito Lindo_. 

The blankets rustle as he sits up. She scoots backward, giving him space. 

"Order me," he decides. "Tell me to get Ms. Lopez's bloody list, calm them all, and return."

"Couldn't I just try to make the world your radius"—after several successful tests increasing his range, she's inclined to think the compulsion's unassailable limitation is dimension, not distance—"and then you can do whatever you want?"

"If you like."

"You're sure?"

"Yes." He sighs. "At least, it's something to do—useless though it may be—rather than agonizing and stewing and bloody _waiting_."

Three things that are definitely useless. He rises from the bed, the moonlight framing his body. His broad shoulders slope to a narrow waist, his torso cleaving gracefully into two long legs. He's … beautiful. His silhouette. Everything.

"Let me dress first," he decides. "And pick up your things, of course."

"Okay."

He faces her without shame. Her cheeks heat, and her heart thunders, but she stares back at him, feasting just a little, letting her gaze dip below his navel. Then he pads from the room.

* * *

Chloe adjusts the distance Lucifer can travel without a peep of discomfort from him, leaving her to wonder exactly what had triggered him that first time he'd gone. Maybe the problem was as he'd hypothesized—that he'd had no overarching purpose for parting beyond bald desire to leave. Maybe having freedom of movement and interaction circumvents problems. In this dimension, anyway. 

After dinner, Ella e-mails them a sprawling list of names and addresses. "These are just a few of the US ghosts," she cautions, her voice tinny from the cellphone's speaker. 

Chloe and Lucifer exchange a wince. A few? The list scrolls off the page of Chloe's laptop multiple times, and the microscopic print makes her squint. 

"Lovely," he mutters, the word weighted and sardonic.

"I'll collate more while you're out," Ella continues. "Where should I send the addresses?"

"I'll have this phone. Text them here."

"Right'o, boss. Hope this helps. Gosh, it's weird to have a front seat for this sort of thing. Like, I know an actual archangel. Heck, I know two! You're older than the _planet_ , and—"

"Ms. Lopez."

"Sorry. Sorry, I. Sorry."

"It's … quite all right," he says, his lip twitching a little like he wants to smile. "We'll have a talk when there's time, I'm certain. You can ask me your burning existential questions."

"Really?" she squeaks excitedly. "Oh, jeez, I was trying not to ask, but—"

"Yes, yes, fine."

"Ohmygosh."

"Devil. Not Jeez. And definitely not Gosh."

"Right. Right. Sorry. So, you think this list will help?"

"It's probably pointless."

"Oh," Ella says glumly.

"Though I imagine it might save an idiot or two. Really, you'd think the smell alone would be clue enough to avoid—" 

"Thanks, Ella," Chloe says forcefully over Lucifer's grousing. "We _really_ appreciate the help." 

"Sure thing," Ella replies.

With that, Chloe hangs up and turns to Lucifer. "Need me to print this out?"

"I've already memorized it," he says.

Her jaw drops as he scoops up her phone and dumps it into his breast pocket. With a graceful motion, he smooths his lapel, hiding any hint of the phone's outline. Then he leans forward. Kisses her cheek. 

"Not to steal from Schwarzenegger, but … I'll be back."

She grins at his sudden shift into an Austrian accent. "Call me if you need anything?"

"Of course."

He disappears in a blur her eyes can't process.

* * *

Lucifer is still gone in the morning, though she wakes up to a text. _Ms. Lopez sent me more names. Carry on without me. I'll catch up._

She drives to the precinct alone. The quiet is maddening—she hadn't realized she'd already reacclimated to his incessant chatter, and she welcomes the bustle in the bullpen as it burgeons into being.

Dan, it seems, had commandeered a conference room. He's already sitting at the head of the table, reviewing the security footage from USC while he sips coffee and eats a protein bar. He looks … bad. But not as bad as he'd been yesterday.

"Doing okay?" she asks, entering.

He scrubs his face, stubble rasping against his palms. "Fine. Just didn't sleep well." He peers through his fingers past her shoulder, into the bullpen. At her empty desk. "Where is he?"

"Would you believe he's saving souls?"

Dan lowers his hands. "Seriously?"

"Kinda." She sets her work laptop and notes onto the table, explaining exactly what Lucifer is doing. 

"That's … wow."

"Yeah."

"I didn't think he gave a shit."

"He does. He _does_ give a shit," Chloe insists. "He loves it here. He loves his friends." He loves _her_. "Maybe he doesn't always show it in the best ways, but he does."

"The guy's an ass, Chlo."

"Yeah, sometimes." He could certainly be mercurial. Impulsive, insensitive, selfish. "But he can also be really sweet. And he's the loyalest, most forgiving, most quietly generous person I've ever met. He wouldn't know a grudge if it bit him." 

"Right."

"He isn't like in the Bible, or Dante. He isn't like any of that. We have everything _wrong_. He's just a guy with a complicated family and unique responsibilities"—Dan snorts incredulously—"and he's trying to carve some happiness for himself in the midst of that. That's all."

"What about the war with Heaven? Or is that fiction, too?"

Admittedly, she hasn't asked. Anything God-related is a touchy subject. But … she's a professional clue interpreter, and Lucifer's left enough hints to write a mystery novel. "I think there's more to that story than Christianity would have you believe."

Dan sighs, but doesn't argue, instead turning back to watch the security feeds. At least he doesn't seem to be having an existential crisis. Yet. She won't press him. They sip their coffees in companionable silence.

* * *

"Think I found your blonde," Dan says a few hours later. 

Chloe looks up from the blistering headache of Robertson records littering her screen. The grainy footage Dan had paused shows Alastor Blackthorn standing in his office doorway, his arms folded over his ample belly, his expression severe, as he cranes his neck to talk to a woman whose back faces the camera. The video is black and white, but the woman's hair is light enough to be obviously blonde. She towers over Alastor.

"Does she ever face the camera?" asks Chloe, frowning.

Dan steps the footage forward frame by frame. The woman and Alastor are definitely arguing. The woman keeps gesticulating. Alastor hunches over, becoming more defensive as the moments creep. Eventually, the woman turns, but as if by some sixth sense, decides precisely then to rummage through her purse.

"Damn it!" Chloe snaps. The woman withdraws an object—hard to see with the poor resolution. "Is that a phone? Is she typing something into her phone?"

"I think so," says Dan.

"Rewind it."

They watch the altercation again, their eyes straining, but it's impossible to tell what the woman's typing. The device is too small, the resolution too poor. No amount of extra video processing will fix that. 

"How tall was Blackthorn?" asks Dan as he rewinds again.

"Five foot eight or so."

"So, she must be at least six feet, including shoes."

"Can you see if she's wearing heels?"

They rewind again. The woman is wearing jeans and a dark-colored hoodie. Her shoes are flats. "Looks like cross-trainers?" says Dan as he stares intently.

They rewind again. Watch _again_.

Something … niggles. Chloe approaches the television, until she's almost nose to screen. 

"See something?" asks Dan.

"I …." She squints. "Rewind again."

He does, and they watch once more. 

She gasps. "Stop. Stop it right there."

The video freezes. The woman is half turned, not yet reaching into her purse, so her chest isn't obstructed by her arms or her bag. There, emblazoned across her breast, is … an ornery turkey thing. "I've seen that before," she says. "What is that?"

"A Hokie," says Dan.

"A whatie?"

"You really need to watch more football." He grins a little before gesturing to the screen with the remote. "It's the mascot for Virginia Tech." 

"That's where the hazing deaths were."

"Chlo, it's a _huge_ school, and there're tons of football fans—they're Division One. I liked 'em better under Beamer, but—"

"No," she says. "No, I've seen this. I know I've seen it."

"Probably over my shoulder while I was watching a game."

"No. I mean, I've seen it _recently_."

He spreads his legs and folds his arms, tucking the remote into his armpit. "Okay. I'll bite. When? Where?"

Good questions. Squeezing her eyes shut, she reviews this week, last week, thinking of each person she's interviewed. What they were wearing. Nothing is sparking any recollec—wait.

 _Wait_.

She rushes to her laptop, grabbing the case folder resting beside it. She yanks the Manila envelope from tab five and dumps the contents onto the table. Photographs taken at the crime scene spill everywhere, flooding across the wide surface. Whoever had been snapping photos outside had lingered on the graffiti, taking several useless shots of the spurting penis drawn on the siding. She shoves those aside, pawing through the rest. Pictures of dilapidated, crumbling rooms. Pictures of the body. Pictures of bystanders milling outside the house. One by one, she scrutinizes every person in every photo, until, "There." 

She pulls two photos from the bunch. One shot shows a woman in profile, wearing an ugly maroon-colored hoodie, as she speaks with Officer Hwang concerning her noise complaint. The next picture shows her from the front, the turkey—Hokie—its white tail feathers and orange, clawed feet emblazoned on the hoodie's chest. 

The woman is dirty blonde. And she's very, very tall.

Chloe taps the photo with her index finger. "Nicolette Cade."

"Weren't you looking for Nicky Something, yesterday?" Dan asks. "I thought you said—"

"Nicky Robertson! Lucifer _said_ she looked familiar." Chloe flips through the case folder for the relevant news article, only to remember the terrible printout. She sits down and navigates there on her laptop. Once the picture from the article has loaded, she holds the crime-scene photo up for comparison. "Do they seem like the same person to you?"

Dan leans over her shoulder. The facial shape of the two women seems … similar. The eyes, a brilliant ice blue, are identical. "Add a dye job and twenty-plus years"—he cocks his head—"it definitely could be. Easy."

She carries the photo of Nicolette Cade to the television and compares it to the anonymous blonde. Both are wearing their hair the same way, pulled into a ponytail with the tail tucked under to form a messy loop. They have a similar svelte frame. Similar height. Same sweatshirt.

"What about these two?" she asks. "Do these seem like the same person?"

"Yeah," Dan answers without pause.

"I agree." She rubs her eyes. "Okay. Okay. So. This … _sort of_ proves opportunity."

"And motive. Sort of."

She nods. But they need more than "sort of" if they're going to make a case. They need paper trails. They need proof. _She_ needs proof.

"Whatcha thinkin'?" asks Dan.

She considers for a moment, then points to her laptop. "I need Ella—I'll do that. You, I need to find a paper trail from Nicky Robertson in this news article to Nicolette Cade, the neighbor with the noise complaint. Then we have to figure out how the hell Nicolette and Alastor intersected after twenty-one years."

"On it," he says.

"Great, thanks." She rushes for the door, stopping only once she reaches for the knob. Looking over her shoulder, she calls, "Hey, Dan?" 

"Hmm?"

She smiles at him. "I'm glad you're back from Florida. Missed you."

"Missed you, too." The beginnings of a tired smile tug at his lips. "Now, let's close this thing before the world ends."

* * *

Ella comes through. In less than two hours, her buddy at AT&T pushes the subpoena through their legal department, and Chloe receives an encrypted download link for all of Alastor's cellphone records. Chloe prints the text messages and call records made from 7 to 9:30 p.m the Friday Alastor had spent with Piper. Sure enough, there's the text to Piper at 9:13 p.m. There's also a three-minute call from another number—a 540 area code—at 8:51 p.m.

Chloe jots down the number and does a reverse lookup. 

Ramirez, Nicolette Janelle. 

540 is Roanoke, where Derek Costa had said the Robertsons are still living. Blacksburg, AKA the rural home of Virginia Tech—same code. 

"Got you," asserts Chloe softly, as the pieces come together.

* * *

The conference room door opens, and Ella skips in with several sheafs of paper. "Prints and DNA came back. Piper Abernathy definitely touched Alastor Blackthorn's collar and cock cage, but not the murder weapon, or the chains. And her DNA isn't anywhere."

"Which supports her story," says Chloe, "that the BDSM hardware and actual torture devices were from two separate events."

"Right. Also!" Ella grins exuberantly. "You'll wanna see this."

She sets down the sheafs of paper onto the table, revealing several color printouts—maps of West Adams. Pins flag the area around the crime scene.

"What am I looking at?" Chloe asks as Dan leans over her shoulder.

"Location data for Alastor's phone," says Ella. "Shows you what cell towers the phone was connected to while it was on."

"But … we already know Alastor was there," Chloe says slowly. "We found his body?"

"No, no. You don't understand. These datapoints are from last week. The last one was on Thursday."

Two days after the body had been found. 

They'd scoured that whole crime scene. There'd been no front yard, only a cracked, weed-penetrated sidewalk. The backyard had been paved over, too; there'd been no place to bury anything. 

"Wanna bet the murderer took it to hide it," Ella says, as if she's reading Chloe's mind, "and then didn't turn it off?" 

"Nicolette Cade lives two houses away from the crime scene," Chloe notes, her heart pounding with the thrill of the hunt. "If the phone was in her house, it would still be pinging the same cell towers."

"Exactly."

"Well, I can cap that with a feather," Dan says, moving around to his side of the table to look at the notes he's jotted onto a steno pad. "Nicolette Janelle Robertson, born January 7, 1986, to parents Andrew Robertson and Mary Robertson nee Boucher, married Antonio Ramirez on January 8, 2004 in Virginia—"

"Wow," says Ella. "Literally the second she turned eighteen?"

Dan nods. "Divorced May 9, 2007—"

"Jeez, I'm surprised it lasted _that_ long."

"Yeah." Dan picks up his pencil, scanning down his nearly illegible scrawl. "So, Nicolette married again on October 10, 2010. Eric Cade in California. Divorced _again_ , April of this year."

"Robertson to Ramirez to Cade," Chloe says, counting on her fingers. Surname changes are a bitch to follow, particularly across different states with different verbiage and filing requirements for marriage licenses and divorce proceedings. "No wonder Derek lost track on a cursory look." 

"Probably," agrees Dan. "He's really overworked."

Chloe beams. "Another reason I'm glad you guys are back. The whole team is here"—Lucifer included, after so very long—"and it's"—a lump forms unexpectedly in her throat—"it's really nice."

Dan's gaze softens.

"Aww." Ella's eyes are misty. "Bring 'er here, buddy." She flings her arms around Chloe and squeezes fiercely enough to make Chloe stumble. Still, Chloe returns the embrace as Ella murmurs, "Go, go Team Good. Can we be Team Good?"

"How's the Devil gonna feel about being called Good?" snarks Dan.

Chloe's torn over whether Lucifer would be offended by the "misnomer" or pleased someone else had decided he's not the root of all evil. Particularly Ella, the most religious in their group. "No idea," Chloe says softly, "but it's the truth, regardless."

Again, Dan doesn't argue. "Team Good," he says. "Ish." Then he clears his throat. "Anyway. I've still got more. Wanna hear it?"'

"Please."

Ella and Chloe pull apart.

"Eric Cade," Dan continues, "had two kids from a previous marriage, Jacob and Madison, 18 and 19. I called the bursar on a whim. Guess who just enrolled at USC this year?"

"Madison?" guesses Ella.

"Jacob."

Chloe sucks in a breath. "That's it. That's the connection! That's how it all fits. She found out the guy who got her brother killed is presiding over her step-kid at his new frat-heavy university."

"Sounds about right," says Dan.

"So … she finds this out," Chloe brainstorms. "Approaches Alastor at work. Tells him to back off. They have a fight. She plots to kill him. Lures him to her house, maybe with a tearful apology or threat. Incapacitates him when he arrives—that concussion he had. Then she stages the death to look like a BDSM scene gone wrong; only she didn't research. She was going off … _Fifty Shades of Grey_ , or whatever." Chloe remembers Lucifer's intense disdain for the title when he'd spoken of it.

"Guess she wasn't counting on the actual Devil investigating her crime scene," Dan says. 

"Guess not," agrees Chloe. "And this is definitely enough for PC. At least enough to compel fingerprints, if not arrest her. Maybe we can search her house, too. Find Alastor's phone."

"Sweet!" exclaims Ella, bouncing on her feet. "I'll finally get to try out my new Manta Ray! You gonna call in the big guns for this?"

"The big …?"

"Lucifer! Team Good, Fab Four!"

"Oh," says Chloe. "Yeah. Definitely. He'll want to see this finished."

First, though, she has to confer with the lieutenant and prosecutor—see how they want to proceed—and she has a _lot_ of paperwork to—

"You go talk," says Dan. "I'll write."

"And I'll get my kit ready," adds Ella.

"Thanks," Chloe says. "Thanks, guys. You're the best."

Then she rushes out the door.

She's got work to do.

* * *

Ella funnels Lucifer dozens more names, and he doesn't return that night, which leaves Chloe some time to brainstorm their other problem. How in the hell to get rid of Lucifer's compulsion. How to make him feel powerful within the scope of slavery.

She lies on the bed, staring at her ceiling fan as the white blades swirl in slow revolutions. Nothing comes to her. Not a single idea. Slavery is slavery. There's nothing powerful about it _ever_. It's abominable. And this kind of slavery, where he's literally her clay to mold, is … extra abominable. 

Can something be _extra_ abominable?

She's still staring into space, spinning her wheels, when the phone rings. Dan's name and picture flash onto her phone's screen. "Hey," she says as she picks up. "Doing okay?"

"Trixie's in bed," he explains, sounding drained. Strained. "Chlo, it's so noisy when it's quiet." He sighs. "That sounds stupid; I know. I'm sorry I bothered—"

"No, it's okay," she says, sitting up. "You're not bothering me. And it doesn't sound stupid at _all_."

"I wish I could just make it stop."

"Want me to come over?"

"No, I'm … I just wanted to talk to somebody."

"I'm here."

The silence stretches. She listens to him breathing softly on the other end of the line as she grabs a pillow to hug. He laughs. "All snuggled in and ready to empathize now?"

She grins sadly. He knows her well. "Yeah. All set."

"Is it weird I thought the world made more sense without God?"

"No. It's"—she strokes the edge of the pillow, thinking about how she'd managed her own reaction: badly—"a pretty big reality shift."

"I liked it better when the unfairness was random."

"You thinking about going back to church?" she asks. He'd stopped. Right after Charlotte had died. 

"I don't know. Chloe, I don't know anything anymore."

"That's how I felt. Back when I first saw his face. That I didn't know anything anymore."

"Then how did you get so zen with everything?" 

"Honestly? I spent time with him. Knowing him makes it … better."

"How?"

"Because he's just as lost and wondering as the rest of us, so at least I know us lowly humans weren't singled out." She laughs a little—a wry, bubbly breath of sardonicism. "He has so many answers, but they just lead to more questions, and … well … that's status quo, isn't it? So, nothing's really changed. There is no answer to life, the universe, and everything."

"Was that stuff he said about Pierce true?"

"What stuff?" she asks. "He's said lots." And lots, and _lots_.

"Was Pierce actually Cain?"

"Oh. Yeah."

"So, the guy who smashed his brother with a rock in the Book of Genesis killed my girlfriend."

"Yeah."

"Is Eve …?"

"Yeah. She's that Eve."

"Jesus." She can picture him shaking his head. A pause. "Wait, is Jesus … Jesus?"

"I haven't had the nerve to ask about that one yet," she murmurs conspiratorially.

"Maybe he's one of the 'unimportant' siblings."

They share a chuckle. She flops onto her back again, sprawling across her mattress. They haven't talked like this in … ages. 

"Remember our honeymoon?" he asks out of the blue, reminiscing, too.

"Of course I do," she answers. 

"We sat on the balcony and listened to the waves. The sky was clear as glass. You fell asleep in my arms."

They'd waited a while after the wedding, until things at work had calmed. She can still smell the salt. And the scent of his skin. She can hear the surf, foaming and frothing. The blanket they'd curled under had been fuzzy white fleece—despite it being August, the nighttime temperature so close to the water had plummeted. She'd ordered hot chocolate from room service. 

"You were reading … what was it?" She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to picture the book he'd left on the table by the rattan papasan, where they'd curled up. " _The DaVinci Code_?"

"Yeah," he says glumly. A pause. "I wish we could go back to that night. It was peaceful. Free. And I hadn't fucked anything up yet."

Her heart constricts. "Dan—"

"Dad!" calls Trixie, somewhere in the distant background.

"I gotta go," he says. "Sorry."

"Dan—"

But he's already hung up on her. Shaking her head, she puts her phone back on the nightstand. Time. He just needs … time. She hopes. His melancholy—his self-recrimination—makes her hurt inside. Makes her want to hold someone, and be held.

On a whim, she closes her eyes again. 

Thinks of him.

 _Hey,_ she says. _You don't have to reply. I just … wanted you to know I love you._

Her phone vibrates seconds later, as, _And I you_ , flashes across the notifications, the sender listed as Chloe Decker (home). 

_I'm brainstorming right now,_ she tells him. _We'll figure it out. I promise._

This time, he doesn't reply. 

She shifts back to staring at the fan. Round, and round, and round it goes. _I wish I could just make it stop,_ Dan had said _._ Something … niggles. Like that morning when she'd seen the Hokie. Something as it relates to Lucifer's situation. But she's not sure how. Or what. _I wish we could go back to that night. It was peaceful. Free._ That niggles, too, and an hour later, it's still niggling as she drifts to sleep.

_I wish I could just make it stop._

_It was peaceful. Free._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the feedback, everybody :)


	40. "nasty little secrets"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the feedback—I love hearing from you guys :)

They stage for the search warrant in the back corner of a Vons parking lot, a few blocks away from Nicolette Cade's residence. About a dozen cop cars and trucks, mostly unmarked, already wait, along with the forensic van. The crowd mills, sipping coffees and eating hot breakfasts bought from the grocery store, or donning flak jackets and checking firearms. The sun isn't peeking over the treetops yet, but the sky has lightened to murky morning blue.

"Remember," Chloe says, her breath fogging in the early chill, "we're looking especially for Alastor Blackthorn's cellphone. It'll have an AT&T SIM card. But we'll be seizing any digital devices we come across, along with anything potentially incriminating. That could be paperwork, tools and equipment—we won't know until we get a look inside."

"Don't worry, Decker," chimes in Myers. "We'll get 'er dead to rights."

A chorus of agreement rumbles through the crowd.

She smiles. "I hope so. Questions?" 

Ella raises her hand. 

"Yeah?"

Ella slinks to the front of the group. "Hi. Hello. Ella. Forensics. Just wanted to remind everybody, if you find a cellphone—any cellphone—don't fiddle with it. Bring it to me or Tony immediately, please." She pumps her fist. "Go team!"

A smattering of chuckles follow, along with staccato echoes of, "Go team!"

"All right," Chloe says. "We'll go as soon as I get word from Jenkins." Jenkins and his partner are sitting in an unmarked car across the street from Nicolette's house, waiting to grab her when she leaves for work. 

Chloe pops her cruiser's trunk, ready to don her gear. Dan isn't here yet, which is … troubling. 

"Hello, dar—" 

She flinches, a raw squeak/shriek stuttering in her throat. Warm hands catch her shoulders as her heart threatens to pound through her sternum like a mallet. 

"Jesus!" she says, panting as she turns to face him. "What'd you do, apparate right into the parking lot?"

"I am not Harry Potter stalking _muggles_ ," he replies, affronted.

She gives him a look.

He offers a watery smile. "Apologies, I'd no intention to startle you."

He's still wearing the same charcoal suit from the night before last—it's wrinkled and smelling faintly of death. His face is pale and unshaven, his hair a disheveled disaster.

"How's it going out there?" she asks softly.

He scrubs tiredly at his cheeks. "Ms. Lopez seems to discover new souls as quickly as I'm able to calm them. These abominations are … _everywhere_." 

He wraps his arms around her, resting his chin against her crown, almost nuzzling her. Like … she's his reservoir for fortitude. She's tempted to pull away when she feels the gazes of her coworkers burning into her—this is not professional in the slightest—but … this isn't copping a feel. This is comfort, simply sought. Screw whatever they think, if they can't see that.

"Is it hard for you to calm them?" she asks, hugging him in return.

"Not difficult so much as taxing," he replies, the words rumbling. 

"Want some coffee? Or donuts? Myers has an open box in his truck bed."

Lucifer shudders, making a sick sound deep in his throat. "Thinking of food only nauseates me."

"The souls make you ill?"

"They should not _be_ , Detective. Not in this way." He swallows. "To look upon so many in quick succession challenges even my constitution. Azrael and her helpers are the ones who were built for this, not I."

"You should rest before you go out again, if you want," she says, concerned. "After we execute this warrant."

"I don't suppose we could go to Dominus? That's what I really need. To not bloody _think_."

She grins. That's … definitely one way to blow off steam. "Maybe Friday night, okay?"

He perks up, his sharp gaze tipping down. "Really?"

"Sure, why not?"

He offers a noncommittal, "Hmm," in reply, the look on his face almost … nonplussed. 

"It helped you relax, didn't it?" she says. "And, now that I know what to expect, I think it might be fun."

"I _see_." The anticipatory glint in his eyes lights a responding fuse deep in her belly. A warm, heady, down-low sort of tightness that makes her want to kiss him. "Well, far be it from me to keep you from your"—he licks his lower lip suggestively—" _fun_." 

She presses closer. "So, it's a date?" 

"Oh, yes."

And he isn't clinging to her like a life raft anymore. Mission accomplished. They stand quietly, enjoying each other's personal space, until her phone beeps, reminding her of the time.

"I'm sorry," she says, pulling away with more than a little reluctance, "I have to gear up."

"Of course," he replies. 

"Your jacket's in here, too, if you want it. I pulled it out of storage."

He declines, as always, instead leaning sinuously against the taillight and folding his arms over his chest.

"Lucifer, if you want to be on the entry team, I'm sorry, but you gotta wear it." 

"An order, is it?"

"No. A _choice_." And not just because it looks wrong to have a guy without protective gear performing the most dangerous part of a search warrant. She offers him what she hopes can be interpreted as a self-deprecating smile. "I really kinda prefer you when you're not full of bullet holes, y'know."

Rolling his eyes, he reaches into her trunk for his jacket and slips it over his broad shoulders. She's double checking the clip in her gun when Dan's cruiser screeches into one of the empty parking spaces at the edge of the cop cluster. 

Dan stumbles out of his car, looking more disheveled than Lucifer. "Sorry!" he mutters, trotting over, dragging his flak jacket with him. "Sorry, I overslept. My alarm …." His voice trails away when he fixes on Lucifer like a bird who'd just landed before a cobra and realized it too late. 

"Daniel," Lucifer says calmly, inclining his head. 

Dan's fingers clench the arm hole of his flak jacket. "Lucifer."

Nobody moves.

"Dan," Chloe encourages softly, "put your gear on. We're pulling out soon."

"Right. Sorry."

He takes a step. Two. Widening the distance between him and Lucifer, beyond the easy strike range of a flailing limb. Shuffling noises follow as he futzes with his jacket.

"I … didn't intend to frighten you," Lucifer admits in the awkward silence. "On Monday. I didn't intend …." His expression tightens. "I was upset."

Dan stares intently at his fingers as they work, the velcro snarling as he adjusts various straps for his current weight. "I didn't mean to provoke you. I was upset, too."

"Apocalypses can be upsetting."

Dan snorts. "No fucking kidding."

Lucifer cocks his head, his dark eyes searching Dan with intense curiosity. With a huffy oh-what-the-hell sigh, Dan asks, "Look, did you really help Charlotte? With her … with her nightmares? About Hell? You helped her?"

Lucifer runs his fingers idly over kevlar. "Amenadiel did far more than I, I'm certain. But, yes, I did try."

"And … sh—" Dan shivers. "She didn't go to Hell."

"No. She did not. Not the second time, anyway."

Dan blinks, and Chloe pictures a zillion cartoon question marks whirling around his head. But instead of pressing, he says, "Okay." Then nods. Vehemently. Like he's still trying to convince himself. "Okay."

"Yes?" says Lucifer.

"Yeah." 

Two of the biggest non-apology apologies Chloe's ever witnessed. Yet … sincere?

Dan tips his nose toward his car. "Gotta grab my gloves. See you there?"

"Yep," says Chloe.

Dan shuffles away, leaving Lucifer to placidly trace his egress with his eyes. Chloe glances at her phone. 6:45 a.m. Hopefully Nicolette didn't call in sick—

Her radio squawks. Jenkins's voice. The code for go, go, go. She claps loudly for everyone to hear. "Jenkins got her. Let's move!"

"Call me when it's clear!" Ella says.

"Yup," says Chloe. "Always."

The sounds of car doors slamming and engines turning over cascade across the parking lot. Lucifer slinks along the side of her cruiser, easing gracefully into the passenger seat. She grins at him as she climbs behind the wheel.

"Ready to catch our bad guy?" she asks.

A predatory grin oozes across his face. "Always."

* * *

They pull onto the curb in front of the house, a great long line of flashing lights. Jenkins already has Ms. Cade in an arm hold by her Jetta—she's hissing and spitting and complaining, an ineffectual tangle of lanky limbs, wild hair, flying curse words. Several officers, Dan included, traipse behind the house, covering the exits, just in case.

"Nicolette Cade," Chloe says as Jenkins cuffs her. "I have a warrant to search the premises. If you could calm down—"

"But I didn't _do_ anything!" Ms. Cade snaps. "This violates my rights!"

"Ma'am," says Chloe, "I have signed legal authority to be here, generated from more than sufficient probable cause." 

"Am I being _detained_?" asks Nicolette.

"Right now? While we search the house?" Chloe folds her arms. " _Yes_."

"But I haven't been Mirandized!"

"We're not questioning you," Chloe says slowly. "Miranda rights are for questions."

"I can sue you if you don't Mirandize me!"

Chloe and Jenkins share a look. Jenkins shrugs. "Okay," he drawls, "Nicolette Cade, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand?"

"Fuck you!"

"Taking that as a yes," says Jenkins wryly.

"Where're her keys?" Chloe asks.

"Not sure. She tossed them over the fence when she saw me."

The next-door neighbor's fence is six feet high, solid wood slats, stacked vertically edge to edge. Not exactly conducive to a noninvasive search, or a reach and grab.

Chloe sighs. "Okay, can someone knock on the neighbor's door and see if they're home? I'm really not interested in waiting around for a locksmi—"

"Um," Lucifer calls, "Detective?"

Following the sound of his voice, she cups the search warrant over her eyes, squinting against the newly revealed morning sun. He's standing on Nicolette's stoop, his thumb outstretched toward the front latch. The door yaws open with a moan, bumping back against the stopper. 

"Was that locked?" she asks suspiciously, trotting over.

"You know me, Detective," he says with a sly smile. "I can get just about _any_ thing to open up."

* * *

Nicolette Cade's house is small. A single story, with one-point-five bathrooms and a kitchen barely large enough to spin around in with one's arms outstretched. Her colleagues jostle into each other like pinballs hitting bumpers as they proceed inside. From an abundance of caution, Myers and Jenkins fan out, guns raised, clearing each room, not that there's much beyond the living room to clear. 

Chloe frogmarches Ms. Cade to the couch to sit, while the rest of the team rummages through her belongings, pulling open drawers and cabinets and boxes, moving furniture, searching every crease, crevice, cranny, and nook in the house. The operation is systematic and practiced. They've done it many times before. 

"But I swear I didn't do anything!" Ms. Cade keeps insisting. "This is _wrong_. You can't just come in. I have rights!"

Chloe tries to show the woman the search warrant and the subpoena again, pulling them from the protective leather sleeve. Ms. Cade gathers some mucus and spits on the warrant instead of reading. Chloe tips the glistening glob of liquid off the legal paper and into the collection cup, much to Ms. Cade's chagrin. "Thanks for the DNA."

"What are youlooking for?" Ms. Cade wails as cops tear apart her kitchen and dining room. "I demand to speak to your supervisor!"

"If you'd like to read the search warrant, you can see a detailed list explaining exactly what we're looking for and allowed to take," Chloe says, folding her arms. "And I _am_ the supervisor onsite, so if you've got a problem, take it up with me."

"But I haven't _done_ anything!" 

Chloe fights to keep the professional look plastered on her face. She can imagine how upsetting it must be to have one's home invaded—all one's things touched and sorted by strangers. In this case, though … Chloe's pretty damned sure this woman is a murderer, and she reaped what she sowed. 

"Shall I have a go?" Lucifer murmurs beside her, not participating in the search. "Perhaps I can wrangle a confession."

Chloe nods. "Do it. But no violence, please."

"Of course."

Lucifer stalks to the couch, sitting down beside the handcuffed Ms. Cade. "Hello, bad guy."

"I'm not a bad guy!" Ms. Cade snaps. 

"Naughty, _naughty_ neighbor, then."

"But … but you said you wouldn't question me!"

"Well, we've Mirandized you now, have we not?" Lucifer says. "You ensured it."

Nicolette reddens, seething, but says nothing.

He smiles like he's debating how best to prepare a four-course meal. "I'm Lucifer Morningstar. Perhaps you've heard of me."

"Who the hell would name their kid _Lucifer_."

"God, but that's neither here nor there." He leans forward a little. "Look at me, please."

"But I didn't _do_ —"

" _Look._ At me, please."

Her jaw slackens, and she quiets.

Dan sidles beside Chloe, his heavy kevlar rustling. His shoulder bumps hers. She glances at him, eyebrows raised, but he shakes his head. They watch Lucifer do his thing.

"Tell me, Nicky," Lucifer continues, almost purring the woman's name. Time seems to slow. A dark, foreboding weight drags on Chloe's shoulders like a parachute. Pressure clogs her sinuses. "Tell me, what is it you desire?"

Ms. Cade sways in her seat. "I …."

"Yes, tell me _everything_ ," Lucifer encourages in a low, sultry tone, motioning for her to continue. "All your nasty little secrets. I'd _love_ to know."

"You would?"

"Oh, yes."

"I …."

He leans closer still. "Yes, my dear?"

"I just want my children to be safe!" she blurts, as though someone had caught the words on fishing hooks and yanked them from her mouth. Her lower lip trembles. Her eyes water. She sniffs, breaking down a little. "I want them to grow up. I shouldn't have to see them die. I love them."

"An admirable goal, if poor _execution_."

Dan mumbles, "Oh, for fuck's sake," under his breath, prompting a delighted smirk from Lucifer.

Ms. Cade takes a shaky breath, tears falling in earnest. "I wish I was someone else."

"I see," Lucifer prods. "And? Anything else?" 

Her face reddens, her demeanor shifting. "And I want someone to bulldoze that fucking god _awful Tell-Tale Heart_ rat pit! Seriously, why aren't you people doing _that_ instead of tearing apart my _house_!" 

Lucifer laughs, the sound sharp and sudden, and the invisible weight lifts. "My, my, _my_ , you must have had quite the interesting night when you realized your murder victim was 'banging.'"

"I … I … what?"

"Thank you, my dear," Lucifer says matter-of-factly, sparing Chloe a pleased glance. "Not a direct confession unless you count _the Tell-Tale Heart_ bit, I suppose—I do love me some Poe—but certainly support for motive."

"Wait. Wait, hey," Ms. Cade says, sounding mystified as she comes back to herself. "What the hell just happened?"

He stands, brushing off his slacks and sleeves like he considers this house a "fucking godawful rat pit," too. He did definitely find a rat, Chloe thinks. 

"It makes … a lot more sense now," says Dan in a hushed tone. "His whole schtick."

"Yeah," replies Chloe. 

She turns, watching Jenkins sort through a bill bucket that had been propped on the dining room table. "Anything?" she asks.

Jenkins holds up an envelope. "An invoice from Handcuff Warehouse?"

"That was for Halloween!" Ms. Cade says. 

"Annnd," Jenkins continues, unperturbed, "a receipt for chains from Home Depot."

"Those were for my fence!" 

"Ms. Cade, I must advise you," says Lucifer, "you are a _terrible_ liar. I can taste your deceit from here."

"You can … _taste_ lies?" Dan asks.

"Bad ones, yes." 

The backdoor slams. "Found it!" Ella calls excitedly, plodding in from the kitchen. In one hand, she totes an evidence bag stuffed with clumps of dirt and something box-shaped. In the other, a triangular black wand thing. "Found the phone. AT&T SIM. Someone buried it with the roses." 

Bingo. 

"It's _mine_ ," snaps Ms. Cade. "I just … I didn't want it anymore."

"Riiight," says Dan.

Ella holds up the wand. "This baby works _great_ , by the way. My new favorite toy! Hunts down cellphones like a shark tracks blood." She frowns. "Huh. I wonder why they call it a Manta instead of a Shark. That's weird. I should write a letter."

"You should," agrees Lucifer. "Sternly worded is best."

"Thanks, Ella," Chloe says. "That's perfect."

Ella nods. "Team Good-ish for the win!"

"Team … Good-ish?" says Lucifer.

She jabs him gently with her elbow, whispering, "Just go with it, dude."

Fighting not to smile, Chloe turns to Nicolette. "Ms. Cade," she says, "I'm officially placing you under arrest. This is where I would normally Mirandize you. Want it again?"

* * *

Booking Ms. Cade fills the rest of the day. They get her fingerprints for confirmation of her misdeeds. Then, there're the reports. So many reports. An arrest report. A chain-of-custody report describing what they took from Ms. Cade's house. An investigative report explaining how the gathered evidence shows Nicolette Cade is guilty. A report describing the many other reports. It's endless. Punishment for success.

Still, Lucifer sticks around instead of resuming his mission to calm ejected souls. He doesn't offer to help, but he's a stalwart presence, fiddling idly with objects on her desk, particularly her Newton's Cradle. The clack-clack-clack of metal balls striking each other soothes. A warm, persistent reminder that her partner is with her. Beside her. For now.

But then it stops.

His chin is tipped into his lapel, his body leaning awkwardly against the chair arm. He twitches, caught in the animated grips of a dream.

"Lucifer," she whispers. 

He doesn't budge.

"Lucifer." A little louder.

With a sniff, he straightens, blinking groggily. 

"Go home and sleep, if you want," she tells him. "You don't have to be here for this part."

He rubs his eyes. "I'm quite all right."

"You're falling asleep in your chair."

"Merely anticipating our date."

"By falling asleep?"

"Yes, well"—he grins—"dreaming will have to suffice until then."

She folds her arms, leaning back. "You were dreaming about us?"

"Oh, yes."

"You … get this still wouldn't be for sex, right? I'm just not ready to try—"

"Of course, Detective. I don't need sex for my time with you to be enjoyable. A fact I believe I've already demonstrated, have I not?"

She thinks of him begging to kiss her boot, and her mouth goes dry. "O—" She clears her throat. "Okay. Just checking." When he doesn't reply except to nod, she turns back to her computer. 

It's Wednesday afternoon. Which means … two days. Two days until their date. What would it be like to attend Dominus purely for pleasure? She shifts in her seat, her lower body filling with a gnawing ache. He'd wear the collar again. And the horns. Maybe something new, too? They should go back to Rian's store. She still hasn't asked Lucifer what toys he enjoys. He fills her mind's eye, writhing on the floor at her feet, stroking her boot like it's his lover. The way he'd looked at her, yearning; the way her body—her desires—had been his world, his _religion_ …. Her breaths tighten. Her chair creaks as she tries to find a comfortable position—pushing him against the desk and fucking him right here would be comforta—whoa.

Whoa, whoa, _whoa_. 

Holy shit.

She shakes her head, trying to calm down. 

"Penny for your thoughts, Detective?" Lucifer says, grinning like he already knows _exactly_ where her brain just went.

"Okay," she admits, "maybe I'm beyond thinking it _might_ be fun." 

He laughs. "I suppose it's official, then."

"What is?"

"We've discovered your crème de la kink."

"I guess we have." She finishes her final report, kicking it off to the printer. "I wanna do it better this time, too." 

He snickers.

"Don't even," she warns him.

He holds up his hands. "I was merely admiring once again how very type A you are."

"No"—she rolls her eyes—"you heard 'do it,' and you cracked up like the immortal seven-year-old you are."

"Guilty as charged."

"I am serious, though. I want to do it better." She'd messed up last time, yanking him prematurely from subspace. This time, if they achieve the same, she fully intends to let him stay blissed as long as he—oh. _Oh_. She sucks in a breath. "Lucifer."

"Yes, darling?"

 _I wish I could just make it stop,_ Dan had said.

 _Chloe, you … made me feel safe enough to stop,_ Lucifer had said. 

_It was peaceful. Free_. Dan.

 _I wasn't calculating. I wasn't worried, or constricted, or haunted by flashes of things I've no desire to remember. I simply … stopped._ Lucifer.

Maybe, the answer has nothing to do with making Lucifer feel powerful. There are other antonyms to slavery.

Maybe ….

Her chair squawks as she bolts upright. "Lucifer, I think I know how to break the compulsion."


	41. "shopping trip"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I want you to physically, mentally, and emotionally prepare yourselves. I will be taking a posting break soon. December 23 will be my last post in 2020. I will be back on January 6, 2021. I have been working hard to be able to leave you in a relatively good spot for Christmas (that's the reason for all the double chapters lately), but when we're this close to the end of the story there really is no perfect place to pause. I did what I could.
> 
> In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this. Thanks to everybody who takes the time to comment!

They converse in the late-afternoon sun, shaded by the shifting shadows of a eucalyptus tree swaying in the breeze. This bench at the edge of the quad, between the precinct and various other justice-related buildings, is one of her favorite spots when she needs a few minutes away from her computer screen, or somewhere quiet to eat lunch. He sits beside her, his body a warm line hip to shoulder with hers, as a group of unis hoof across the diagonal walk. A flock of birds sporting iridescent black feathers—not crows, not ravens—hop over the grass, cackling and pecking at each other.

"So," she says, watching them fight over a discarded bread crust, "what do you—"

"Yes."

"—think?" She turns her head to peer at him. "You're sure?"

"Am I sure." He barks a soft, wry laugh. "Detective, if it didn't have a single bloody chance in Hell of working, I'd still say yes. Have you not been listening to me?"

"But," she asks, "do you think I'm right about subspace being the answer? Really?" 

He nods slowly. "BDSM is certainly ritualistic when properly executed: boundary discussion and bargaining, scene, aftercare, all whilst maintaining enthusiastic informed consent. And instead of enslaving me, you'd be setting me free. Liberation through subjugation. I'd say that's an antithetical state."

"And then we kiss, and the compulsion goes poof."

"It would be _insanity_ not to try."

She thinks so, too. "Okay." 

"But," he continues, his palms running along his thighs, between the crease of his hip and his kneecap—that self-soothing nervous tick, "truthfully, I've no wish to speculate on efficacy. It will work, or it won't, but it's an experience I'd like to have either way, and I'd rather not ruin it with dashed hopes."

"Oh. Yeah, I … I get that." 

Quietly, she rests her hand on his knee, interrupting his fidgeting. He lingers skin to skin with her, taking a deep breath and letting it out. 

"This might take a hell of a lot more than a club visit," she says, shifting her fingers to interlock with his. "We're both way more stressed than we were"—since Constantine had nixed the idea of an easy abracadabra fix—"and I feel like we could be building a watched pot never boils metaphor. You know?" 

"Hmm," he answers, noncommittal. A bird nabs the bread, dropping crumbs as it hightails into the tree above. The others chatter and cuss, chasing after. "What did you have in mind?"

"Maybe … something more intimate than going to the club?"

A sly expression burgeons on his face as he watches the bird bedlam. "Oh, I think I like where this discussion is headed."

She smiles. "Yeah?" 

He meets her gaze, unblinking and hungry. "Oh, yes."

"So your heart's not set on Dominus."

"My heart is set on _you_ , Detective."

For a moment, she can only sit there, feeling hot and buzzy and overcome. "What would you like to do?" she asks.

"What are you willing to do?" he counters.

She tips her thigh up onto the bench, turning toward him. "Lucifer, this is about you. Your desires. Your needs. You're the one we need to free here. Not me."

"Yes, darling," he replies patiently, "but my fantasies aren't fully independent from yours, nor should they be. Putting aside the fact it's horrendous etiquette to proceed with a scene when enthusiastic, mutual consent does not exist, if you do this while you're uncomfortable, it will hardly relax me. I should think my witnessing your misery would contribute far more to your watched-pot metaphor than anything else." 

Shit. "Okay, that's true."

"So, I ask again," he says, unblinking. "What are you willing to do? What are your hard limits?"

What _are_ her hard limits? 

She sticks the tip of her thumb into her mouth, nibbling on her fingernail. She thinks of him being summoned to her room when she'd had a noisy sex dream, his body so overcome by her desires, he hadn't had space left for his own. _Redredredredred_ , he'd sobbed. She thinks of her awful, gut-dropping realization that kissing him on the mouth is just an endless kiss-me-kiss-me-kiss-me command. 

For consenting to sex acts, the compulsion is particularly insidious, because it disguises punishment for noncompliance as lust, which must feel bizarre—and therefore easy to recognize—when it makes him lust for something that isn't sex or sex-related, but when it is? Talk about conflicting signals as penalty and desire become synonyms. 

For the sake of helping him enter subspace, she's willing to relax her no physical-intimacy stance sooner than she'd speculated. She's willing to trust in the strength of a pre-activity discussion, where they review a play-by-play when he's of sound mind. But she can only trust so far. Him being able to _withdraw_ consent is as important as being able to give it. She can't risk losing her wits and missing a cue from him—she'd never forgive herself.

That's … the crux of it, she realizes.

Why she's been so reluctant.

It's not that she doubts he would enjoy "shagging" her despite their current dynamic—it's that she could enjoy it too much, to potentially catastrophic ends.

"No pleasuring me," she decides. "No kissing until the true love thing. Nothing where my involvement could turn singular commands into a continuous feedback loop that's difficult or impossible for you to say no to. And _nothing_ where I might miss you saying no because I'm too involved in me, me, me. My pleasure will be in doing this for you. That's it."

"I assume this means I'm _still_ not to penetrate you?" he snarks.

Not without pleasuring her, because owww. Not that she thinks that's his style. "No. No sex."

"Very well," he accedes, serious again.

"I'm really sorry. I know that's a pretty big limitation on your fun." 

He smiles, suggestive and sin-laden. "Detective, I can make _anything_ fun once I know the ground rules. Sex is not requisite for my pleasure."

"But what about before?" she asks, boggled. "When you used to sleep with … with _everyone_."

He sighs. "Detective, do you know how often I shag in Hell?"

Does she _want_ to?

"Never," he answers before she can decide. 

Wait. "Seriously, never?"

"It's. Hell," he bites out, scowling. "It is miserable and dirty and pleasureless. It is _torment_. Ash gets everywhere, into every crack and crevice; there is no water for washing. I'm limited to what I can smite from my skin, so I can never be clean whilst I reside there. Why the bloody hell would I wish to sully myself further by shagging someone in such squalid conditions? I cannot even tolerate my closet being disarranged."

"You didn't sleep with Maze?"

"Not until we came _here_."

Her eyes prickle as she imagines him imprisoned, rejected by God. "I … didn't realize it was like that for you." Hell, she'd pictured massive subterranean orgies beside a bubbling lava pit or something. A _lust_ pit. Hot. Brimstone-y. But not void of absolutely anything he enjoys. "I mean, I knew it was Hell—it's _Hell—_ but …."

"It's hard for you to conceptualize, having never been there, I'm certain."

And if her plan to free him works, he'll return anyway, willingly, despite the misery he knows awaits him. Their inevitable, unavoidable endgame, because he'd learned to love a few humans. Because he loves _her_. He's a hero, perfectly tragically unsung.

 _Chloe, you've my word, if the compulsion ever breaks, I won't leave for good without giving you time to speak to me,_ he'd said. _I won't leave you until you're satisfied there's no other solution._ The best he could offer her. A bitter pill. 

But she can't let herself consider that doing a scene with him might actually be an elaborately scripted goodbye, or she'll fall apart.

"Yeah. I just," she adds distantly, "I didn't think."

He says nothing.

She rubs her eyes. Recenters herself to the problem at hand. "So, you're saying all your previous trips to Earth were like some massive spring-break bash? Like … college students partying at the beach, getting massively drunk, and banging their brains out? That's what it was for you? Coming here?"

" _Yes_ ," he says emphatically, "and it was delightful and invigorating and _fun_ , but it wasn't a life, and I don't _need_ it; I was on holiday from literal Hell."

In the wake of his logic, her perception shifts. Wow, she'd read him wrong. 

"I'm not on holiday anymore," he continues, "I'm home. You are _home,_ Detective."

Oh. 

He cups her face, stroking the ridge of her cheek. "Now, do you see?"

"I'm … sorry."

"For what? Attributing my flamboyant behavior as if I were a middle-aged human who's lived his entire short life on earth?" He shrugs. "It's understandable." 

"But it wasn't fair." 

"No. But understandable." 

She pushes her cheek into his hand, nuzzling him. "You really have no clue how to hold a grudge, do you?"

His smile is soft. Beautiful. "Not with you, no."

She scoots closer. At first, he almost seems bewildered. Then he wraps his arm over her shoulder. She rests her ear against his lapel. The familiar scent of his cologne lingers. She reaches across his belly, slides her palm underneath his coat, and strokes his ribs on his other side. "So, I guess the remaining question is: Lucifer Morningstar, what do _you_ desire?"

The birds have found another scrap to fight over while he thinks. The tree overhead rustles in the wind. A woman wearing high heels and a business suit clacks down the center walk. Lawyer, maybe? Chloe doesn't recognize her, but she radiates Charlotte vibes. 

"Are you," he says at last, "at least willing to touch me?"

"Touch you, how?" she asks.

"Will you stroke me off? Can this be sexual at all? Or will you draw the line at G-rated again?"

Giving him a hand job. Now, there's a picture, and her mind inevitably shows her the lurid, Technicolor HD extravaganza of it all. She imagines unbuttoning his pants, pushing her fingers underneath the elastic edge of his—wait. He goes commando. She imagines unbuttoning his pants, sliding her fingers beneath his navel to tease at the wiry hairs of his happy tr—

"Enjoying the mental show?" he asks, smirking.

"Yes," she admits, blushing, and his grin goes nuclear. "Look, if you consent before we even start—"

"As is appropriate for all scenes."

"—yeah. Okay, then. That …." She tries not to think of how dry her throat has gotten, or how much the space between her legs aches from emptiness. Not getting lusty while they do this—even if he's not pleasuring her—is going to take Herculean restraint. "Stroking you off would be my line. I wouldn't wanna cross it, but if that's what you desire—I'm willing, I guess."

His eyes narrow. "You _guess_ you're willing, or you _are_ willing?"

"I am," she says quickly. "Sorry, I am."

"The idea brings you pleasure as well?" 

Fuck, yes. "Lucifer, if we weren't fighting wars with this amazing compulsion, that wouldn't even be a question. Trust me."

His subsequent cat-caught-the-canary expression makes her want to kiss him. Nerves flutter in her gut as her brain conceptualizes that all this fantasizing she's barely let herself do until now—it's not a fantasy anymore. It's going to happen. Imminently. "It's … um. Been a while, though."

"Ahh." Lucifer's eyes glint. "Re-popping your cherry, is it?"

"Um"—her blush is blazing fire—"yeah."

"I'm certain I'll enjoy, regardless."

God, she hopes he does. If this doesn't fucking work, she might literally burst. "So, what else?"

"Shall we go to Rian's? I'll consider my options en route, and then we can browse—what?"

She laughs. "Sorry, it's just weird to me to equate this whole thing to a shopping trip."

"Darling, it _is_ a shopping trip."

"Which is why it's weird!"

"It's foreplay through a type-A lens," he counters. "Right up your alley, I'd think.

"Well, I didn't say I wasn't looking forward to it."

"Hmm," he rumbles, kissing the top of her head. "Touché, darling." 

She grins as buoyancy burgeons in her body. "I really love you, you know."

"And I you," he replies almost easily. Then he stands, offering his hand to help her up. "Now, let's find something to dominate me with, shall we?"

She links arms with him, and they leave the quarreling birds to their "discussion" about crumbs.

* * *

"Are you willing to edge me?" he asks as they pull to the curb outside Rian's.

"What's that?" 

"Stringing me along the edge of orgasm for a prolonged period before rewarding me."

She puts the car in park and pulls out the key. Rian Flannery's storefront reflects the bright, busy street. Cars crawl past, thickly packed like marching ants. She eyes the side mirror, waiting for a gap, so she can step out. "You actually want to be catch-22ed?"

"Well, no. That's excruciating in a matter of minutes, which isn't really edging." He grins. "I meant via you using your natural wiles."

Her _wiles._ She'd never pictured herself as someone with wiles, and she'sshocked, given how his compulsion works, that he would request her to use them. "You actually want me to drag things out? I'd have thought you'd be all about instant gratification right now." 

"Delayed gratification is delightful when it's done to amplify one's anticipation, you know." His seatbelt clicks as he releases it. The buckle claps him gently against the chin as it withdraws—he swats it away. "Revelatory, even, when the long made promise of reward is joyfully met instead of _violently withdrawn for sport_." He bites out the last words with more bitterness than dark chocolate, not that she can blame him. 

"You've fantasized about this with me?" she asks. "The joyful meeting, I mean. Not the violent withdrawing."

"Oh, yes." His eyes are darkly desirous. "Many times."

She imagines worshipping his naked body like he'd worshipped her boot, not for moments but hours. Bringing him pleasure after so much stress and pain. Her heart thunders in her ears as the painfully vacant feeling between her legs returns with a vengeance. Jesus. 

"Sounds good!" she blurts, fleeing into a sudden gap between passing cars, created by the light turning red at the corner. 

He's smirking at her from the sidewalk, a pillar of too pleased smugness, as she winds around the car. "You're winding me up on purpose, aren't you?" she asks as she steps up to the curb. "Something with your Devil gizmo thingy." 

His grin shows teeth. "My, you _are_ wound up."

"That's not your cue to jump me, but _yes_." She takes a breath. Blows it out. "This was a lot easier to squelch when it was hypo _thetical_."

"So, don't squelch." 

She presses her fists together in front of her chest. "Lucifer, I am _trying_ — _very hard,_ I might add—to not somehow make you kiss me, so we can have this discussion and make these choices with clear heads, and _you are not fucking helping._ "

His gaze softens. He doesn't step closer. Instead, he holds up his hands in a placating gesture. "Darling, I can't help if merely mentioning my desires excites you. I promise, I'm only talking."

"And standing there. Being _really_ sexy."

He sniggers. "If it helps, the feeling is entirely mutual."

"Never figured you for the one with more restraint between us," she grumbles. 

"Because I am not squelching. I _like_ marinating in anticipation, Detective. Desire's my jam."

"Well, you can't force me by accident!" 

"So, give me a bloody time limit," he counters. "Tell me not to service you until after our scene."

"I don't want to rely on something so easily canceled. Not when we're intimate. Lucifer, that's a recipe for _disaster_."

"Now, at least?" he amends. "So you can be allowed to react and feel without rupturing a blood vessel or some such." 

"Lucifer—"

"I assure you, Detective," he says, stepping closer. "It will be quite obvious if I somehow slip the leash in this context, because I _will_ be snogging you." He brushes her lip with his thumb and smiles. "Not that I'd mind—this is for your comfort, not mine."

"Has anyone ever told you you're, like, _disturbingly_ persuasive?"

"Only an entire religion."

She laughs. She can't help it. Despite the chip on his shoulder about said religion, he seems to share her mirth, and … oh, hell with everything. She flings her arms around him, suddenly not caring anymore about keeping space between them. He nuzzles her, his sharp-angled nose bumping into hers, though he doesn't try to lock their lips. 

"I like your smell," he tells her softly. "I like your skin, and your heat. _You_."

Her insides twist into an aching, needing knot, but she makes herself pull away. "I love you," she says firmly, splaying her palms against his chest, "but we _cannot_ do this. Not right now." If he's disappointed, he doesn't show it behind his placid expression. "I don't want you to kiss me, or cuddle me, or nuzzle me, or otherwise physically interact with me for sexual purposes while we're in this store, no matter what the hell I say or do. Okay?"

"Yes, Detective." He nods crisply before turning toward the door, pulling it open, and gesturing within. "Shall we?"

* * *

"Hello again, m'dears!" Rian is quick to greet them. "More fetish clubs to infiltrate?"

Lucifer beams. "Actually, we're here for us this time. Thought we'd have a spot of fun."

Rian brightens, his chest puffing up like he might burst. "Oh, splendid. _Splendid_!" He claps his hands excitedly. "You've always waxed such fine, poetic words about your dear Detective; I was rooting for the pair of yeh the moment you asked me to identify your special penis for her." 

A funny, strangled sound gets stuck in her throat, but Rian's enthusiastic brogue eases her mortification. Somewhat. "Um. Hi."

"Hello, m'dear. Anything I can help you find today?"

Temperance. Sanity. A muzzle for her libido. "Um." She coughs. "I … think we just want to browse." She looks at Lucifer. "Browse, right?"

"Indeed," Lucifer agrees.

Rian nods, smiling beatifically. "Well, I'll just be here at the register if you've questions." He pats the till like it's an old friend. "Do let me know."

With that, they peruse. 

* * *

"Are you still opposed to gags?" Lucifer asks, a supple leather leash already folded over his forearm for purchase, as he inspects the packaging of a ball gag. 

She stares dubiously at the device. "How would you safe word?"

"I've used finger snaps before. Three for green, two for yellow, one for red. Or something louder, like a training clicker for pets. Oh, or a bell." He looks over his shoulder. "Rian, have you any clicker thingies or bells?"

"By the register!" is Rian's too happy response.

She shakes her head. "No, that's okay. Finger snaps are fine."

" _Excellent._ " Lucifer swipes the package off the rack, and they proceed to the next aisle. Her eyes widen when he selects a box containing a see-through plastic cock cage. "Not custom-fitted, but since you can command me not to remove it, I see no disadvantage. I'm blissfully helpless either way, all my power given to you."

"O … kay," she says, licking her lips nervously. Good lord, she's going to have a lot of googling to do tonight. How to … _do_ any of this. But then she thinks of her canvas again. Him. Gorgeously naked, sweat pearling his skin as he—no. Oh, no. Not here. 

"You're squelching again, darling," he rumbles by her ear, and she jumps.

"It's _instinctive_ , okay?"

Each syllable tickles her eardrums as he adds, "When you finally permit me to pleasure you, I will _delight_ in helping you overcome that impulse."

" _Lucifer_!"

"What? You didn't say I couldn't flirt."

Which … okay. Okay, point. Fine. She rolls her eyes as they continue.

* * *

"You're sure you want to be restrained?" she asks. "I mean, I'm not criticizing—you do you, or, well, _I'll_ do you"—he snorts—"but you said they make you panic." 

"The chains I arrived in, yes." He reads the box, lingering on instructions like SIMPLE TO ASSEMBLE! and NECESSARY TOOLS INCLUDED!!! After he'd picked up the chastity cage, he'd returned to the register for a shopping basket. With the restraints, he'll need a freaking cart. "But these are made for comfort," he decides, "and seeing the box doesn't upset me." A pause. "No, I think restraints will be tolerable in this context. No blindfolds, please, by the way. Hard limit for now."

"No surprises; I know," she replies gently. "I wouldn't." Still, she frowns. "Shouldn't this be about pleasure, not toleration?"

"Also healing, perhaps." He looks down, running his finger along the edge of the box. "I think … yes."

"What do you mean?"

His formerly impish expression—all hints of flirtation and ease—has evaporated. "It's … only I'd very much like to remind myself these things are still delightful in proper context. Somewhat the opposite of what the Doctor was saying, but—"

Chloe leans against the shelf. "What did Linda say?"

"She mentioned something about re-exposing myself to my trauma in a milder form. Stress inoculation or some such." He expels a soft breath that might be a laugh. "Which … I suppose thiswhole bloody situation is doing, come to think. Being owned by you is the mildest form of my bloody 'trauma' in existence." He puts the words trauma in air quotes, like he still doesn't quite believe the term applies to him. Trauma. He was traumatized. He tilts his head, contemplating. "Hmm."

"Lucifer—"

"Please, I," he starts sharply, easing off when he realizes she's stopped arguing, "I remember little of my enslavement, but I do receive … flashes, not just nightmares. More, now—perhaps because of the bloody inoculation thing." 

"Oh, Lucifer, I—"

"Detective," he murmurs, "if I'm to find subspace again, to truly relax as required, I believe I need something"—he steps into her space, tremors running through him—"something _newer,_ something analogous in mechanics but antonymic in tenor, on which to focus my attentions. Please." 

"Okay," she agrees. "If that's what you want." 

"I do." He tips the side of his head against her. His stubble rasps against her temple. 

"How much do you really remember right now?" she asks, dragging her palm up his spine, as curiosity sinks in hooks. "Beyond when she caught you, I mean."

He stiffens. 

"Sorry," she rushes to say. "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked. Particularly now. We don't have to talk about—"

"She … took from me. Forced me. _Used_ me." Dark, frothing emotions swell like waves in a storm. "Used something I'd forgotten was mine—something primordial. I've no idea what it was. I only know it was profound, and I …. She …." He trails away, his expression broken.

"I'm here," Chloe soothes. 

"She took from me, Detective, and it _hurt_."

"I can't imagine."

"Please, help me stop again?" he entreats her softly. "I'd very much like to stop for a while."

_Chloe, you made me feel safe enough to stop._

God. Suddenly, she feels like a jerk for questioning his preferences. She hadn't really accounted for the subtextual elements in this endeavor. That it's not just about freeing him from this goddamned compulsion, or having not-sex with him; it's about helping him sort what was _done_ to him. It's about fostering a moment of safety and trust when he sorely needs one. It's about him reclaiming some of his trauma. 

"Are you well, m'dears?" calls Rian in a concerned tone. "Things took a shift for the dour."

"We're fine," she calls back, gripping Lucifer's shoulders. "He's just—we're fine, thanks. Debating the intricacies of restraints." 

"Ah," says Rian, and she turns to Lucifer, pushing her fingers through his hair and adds in a murmur, "Not an order, yeah?"

He doesn't reply.

Rian continues, "The box you're looking at—it's a good set. Perhaps not unbreakable for the likes of him"—he nods at the back of Lucifer's head—"but quite sturdy overall, and easy to put together."

"Sounds perfect." She's not super awesome with tools, but she knows enough to function as a single homeowner with a precocious kid who sometimes breaks shit. She kisses Lucifer's shoulder. "So, what are you envisioning, exactly?" 

"Will you tie me on my back to the bed?"

"On your back."

"So I can see, yes."

Chloe licks her lip suggestively, though anticipation hasn't yet returned from their detour. "So, I'll gag you, and put you in chastity, and tie you to the bed and pleasure you, and I won't let you orgasm until you've earned it." There. The pleasant, urging ache in her belly reappears as she talks. For him, too, from his hungering, titillated expression. Dragging the tip of her nail lightly up his arm, she continues, "I'll touch you everywhere you've ever dreamed of me touching, because I love you, and I really want to share that with you, if _you_ want." 

"Yes," he says, his eyes tracing her movement. "Yes, I _really_ bloody do."

"Should I make you think about what I'd do with you if you weren't compelled?" 

"Oh, yes," he says. "Fill me with your lusty little laundry list. Rub my nose in it. Every prurient piece. I'll take notes for next time."

Next time.

God, she hopes they get a next time.

"Tell me more about what you desire," she says, looking up at him. "Tell me everything." If she can check off his entire wishlist, she will. "I want to make this count."

* * *

They ride to Venice Beach in comfortable silence, a heap of fetish equipment stuffed into her tax-payer-bought trunk. But, hey, she's allowed to make detours for essential shopping if they're on the way home, and this was definitely on the way home, and definitely essential. She'd die if she had to explain _why_ it's essential, of course, but …. 

"I'll book tomorrow and Friday off," she says as she parks in her assigned space. "And Dan has Trixie until Sunday, so … we should be good. Plenty of time." Hopefully. Even if subspace proves elusive.

"Shall we give it a go tonight?" Lucifer asks. "I'm game if you are."

"I'd rather wait. We've got a lot of setup to do. You're exhausted. And I need to do some research."

He arches an eyebrow. "Research, is it?"

"Well, it's not like I've done any of this before. I'd like to have _some_ idea—if you're gagged, you're not exactly gonna be able to coach me."

He regards her with a fond expression. "How very type A, indeed." He exits the car, the frame bouncing on its shocks as his weight shifts, and smiles back at her. "Very well. I look forward to tomorrow."

"Me, too," she says. 

His smile widens. "Not squelching now, I see."

"Nope."

They each grab a load from the trunk—him the big box with the restraints; her the bags full of toys—like they've just returned from Macy's with a big haul. She's eager to settle onto the couch with her laptop for a bit before she sets up the—

"I recommend starting on BDSM Cafe."

"Huh?"

He nods toward her laptop bag. "For your research. They have guides."

"Oh. Right."

The box contents clank as he shifts. "I'll deal with this. You enjoy your"—he wets his lip suggestively with his tongue—" _reading_."

She frowns. "Do you actually know how to use a tool? Like … _any_ tool?" 

"Believe you me, darling"—he snickers, his suit gleaming in the waning light—"I've handled _many_ tools in my long life."

"Lucifer. Seriously."

"Well, _someone_ had to install the bondage swing in my penthouse, you know."

"You didn't pay for installation?"

"Where's the anticipation in _that_?"

With a bewildered laugh, she waves him off. "Fine. Have fun, if you want. Please, don't break my bed?"

A delighted, bass bark of laughter fills her apartment. "Challenge accepted," he says with a wink. He bounds up the steps as she's pulling her laptop from its sleeve.


	42. "good Devil"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and/or a safe, healthy, and happy December. I'll be back on January 6 with a straight sprint to the ending :) Thanks everyone! I hope you enjoy this.

She tries to sleep. She tries _everything_. But the butterflies in her stomach won't stop their jamboree, and the best she manages is an ephemeral doze. She peers through her eyelashes at the digital clock on her nightstand. 2:47 a.m. How, when it feels like it's been _years_ since they'd said goodnight? 

With a frustrated sigh, she shoves off the covers and heads downstairs. At some point, Lucifer had left the bed—maybe he'd gotten sick of her tossing and turning, twisting and kicking. He sits in the dark, the flickering lights and dancing shadows of the television framing his face, giving him an almost otherworldly countenance. An angel in her living room. Her angel. His gaze ticks to her as she reaches the bottom step, his eyes glistening from the kaleidoscope on the screen. 

"Couldn't sleep either?" he asks as she joins him. 

"I think maybe I was crazy, assuming we could rest with this hanging over our heads," she admits. "What are you watching?"

"I'm not certain." The moving pictures unfurl like psychedelic flowers. The subtitles aren't English, and no sound pulses from the speakers. "I've been thinking too hard to read the dialogue."

"Thinking?"

"Well, simmering, I suppose," he amends, peering at her in the shifting darkness. "I'm too bloody excited to think."

Excited. The Devil. For her to—God. The pressure mounts, and the butterflies almost seem like they're vibrating. She hides her face in her palms, curling against him as she makes an embarrassing, high-pitched noise. He wraps his arm over her shoulder, rubbing her bicep. 

"Maybe we should just start," she says through the gaps in her fingers. "Now. Bite the bullet or whatever before I die of performance anxiety. Can performance anxiety kill you?"

He laughs. "I think not." He kisses her temple. "Either way, you needn't worry. I'm certain the experience will exhilarate whether or not I achieve subspace."

Exhilarate, he says. "You're sure?" 

"Yes," he replies. "With you." 

He shifts to fully face her, propping his elbow against the back of the sofa and resting his cheek against his fist. A lock of unkempt hair tilts over his forehead, as if to gesture to his cultivated five o'clock shadow, and the plunging V formed by his robe's loose lapels.

Slowly, she drops her hands. God, he's handsome. 

"How are you mine?" she asks.

His smile devastates her. "I could ask you the same." 

He cups her chin, stroking the ridge of her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Her body stirs with heat and the dissonant anxiety of not quite blatant desire. She leans into his touch, wrapping her fingers around his hand. Squeezing until his knuckles shift under his skin.

"I'm game, by the way," he says.

"Game?" 

"To start."

Her stomach swoops. "Now?"

"Yes, now. Almost always, really."

"Oh." Somehow, she hadn't pictured doing this in the middle of the night while she's wearing a t-shirt and cotton sleep shorts. She definitely hadn't imagined starting with a simple gee-let's-do-it. And, yet. Why not? They don't exactly have time to waste. "Okay." She pulls away, swiping her fingers through her bedhead hair. "I … okay." Nerves thrum to life, an orchestra. "Everything like we talked about?"

His smile widens, crinkling the skin around his eyes, shaving eons off his demeanor. "Yes."

"You're sure."

"Of course," he says with a chuckle. "That was the point of negotiating, you'll recall: being certain."

Her heart thumps in her ears. Her palms are suddenly slippery. She's doing this. She's … really going to do this. With Lucifer. 

Now.

"How do I even start?" she asks.

"Like the club, yes? Tell me what you desire, and we'll proceed from there." 

He makes it sound so easy. "I …."

"Yes, darling?"

The anticipation in his tone—gleaming in his dark eyes—enthralls her. Own the Devil. Make him feel free. He _wants_ it.

She wants it, too.

The realization is stark in her headspace. Loud and prominent. She is Chloe Decker. Mom, cop. Woman with a control kink. Dom.

"Do it," he encourages, a silken purr. "Command me. Make me _beg_ you."

Two weeks ago, of all the places she'd ever imagined herself, this … isn't one. 

And yet? 

"Bring me your iPad," she tells him, resolving herself. "And all of the toys we discussed. Now."

"Yes, Detective," he says, standing. 

She flops against the couch, staring at the ceiling as he strides away. "Oh, and grab my phone, please!" she adds. 

"Yes, Detective." His robed form disappears as he bounds upstairs three at a time. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. She grabs a pillow and hugs it until the stuffing strains the zipper. She's really doing this.

Chloe Decker, dom.

To the Devil.

He returns with the iPad. A pile of leather, buckles, plastic, rubber. 

"Put everything here," she says, patting the cushion beside her.

When he obeys, she picks up the iPad. The light of the television flickers against the LCD. She strokes the top edge. "This is mine again. Not yours. You get what I give you."

"Yes, Detective."

"Move the coffee table aside," she says, and he does. She points to the newly empty space. "Stand there, facing me." He poses for her, as demanded. "Now, strip. Slowly."

"Yes, Detective."

Languid, graceful, he unfastens his robe, letting it slide down his arms and pool at his elbows before dropping to his ankles, exposing him. He isn't wearing anything underneath, though with his back to the flickering television, he's a shadow. 

"You don't wear clothes," she tells him. "I want to see you."

"Yes, Detective. May I hang my robe?"

"It's not your robe. It's _my_ robe."

"Yes, Detective. Sorry, Detective."

She points to the recliner. "You can drape it there. Turn on the lamp while you're at it." 

"Which?" he asks.

"This one," she says, gesturing to a switch she could easily reach. 

A smile creeps across his features. He lays the robe on the specified chair before circuiting back to the lamp. The scent of vanilla wafts against her nose. She breathes him in as he makes a point of leaning over her, his body eclipsing the room, his bare side, shoulder, and hip so close she could—

The light flicks on, illuminating everything.

Illuminating him. 

Her mouth goes dry as he returns to the middle of the room, naked, blocking her line of sight to the television. This is the first time he's stripped at her direction—almost the first time she's purposefully peeked. _Definitely_ the first time she's let herself ogle.

He's nothing but long lines, sharp edges, and sculpted muscle. A thin, tapering dusting of dark hair points from his navel into—"A heart?" she blurts, fresh heat searing across her face. That hadn't been there before. "When the hell did you have time to manscape?" 

"After I installed the restraints and assembled the cock cage."

"But—"

"I _told_ you I'm good with tools, did I not?"

She chokes on a laugh.

"I'm usually more of a landing-strip lover," he continues, "but I thought I'd try something new." He tilts his head, gesturing downward with both hands, like … _here is my gift to you; please, enjoy_. "Do you fancy it?"

She follows the heart-tipped happy-trail arrow to its terminus. Unlike most men she's known intimately, he isn't circumcised, but that does nothing to detract. The peppering of commands she's already given him has aroused him a little. He's not erect, but he isn't flaccid either. She lingers, staring longer than she should, as his smirk stretches wider. 

"Am I to take that as a yes, then?" he almost crows before switching to falsetto, "Yes, Lucifer, it's most definitely my favorite devilish detai—" 

"You, you, _you …._ " She raises her index finger. "Turn around."

"Yes, Detective."

The move reveals his shoulder blades, and a back now absent marbled wing scars. Her gaze roves down the slope of his spine to his ass. Which … is also perfect.

"Drop to your knees," she says.

"Yes, Detective."

She grabs the gag they bought together and rips off the tags. "I'm gonna silence you for that snark." She grimaces at her brusk tone. "I mean … it's okay, right? We're really starting?"

He laughs, peering impishly over his shoulder at her. "Yes, Detective. By all means, punish me for my naughty, _naughty_ sass."

She rolls her eyes.

"Open your mouth," she says, approaching behind him, and he does. 

He's pliant as she jams the rubber ball against his mouth and presses inward, flattening his tongue, stretching him open until his jaw resists. She buckles the strap tightly at the nape of his neck. He can't spit it out, can't remove it—not now that she's made him wear it. With his lips stretched around the ball, he can't smirk at her either. Yet his arousal's growing like she offered fellatio.

A frisson of thrill shoots through her body.

Hers, her tiny voice says.

He's _hers_.

She puts her palm against his forehead, tipping his head back. The glee in his eyes sends another frisson down her spine. He's hers, and he wants to be. 

He desires her to rule him. Dominate him. Own him.

"You don't _speak_ unless I tell you to. You're _mine_."

His jaw works at the gag. He grunts. His skin blazes against her palm. She splays her fingers against his chest, pulling him against her, the back of his head cupped by her cleavage through her shirt. 

"Color?" she says.

He snaps three times. Green. 

"I always want you to safe word—to include red, green, and yellow states—if you want or need to, via any means necessary. _Always_."

He nods. 

"In fact"—best to test—"consider the freedom-of-interaction command totally revoked. I don't want you to have that anymore." 

He shivers a little, saying nothing.

"Can you touch yourself?" she asks.

He lowers a hand to his crotch, clearly intending to stroke his growing length, but hovers over his pubic bone instead. A flummoxed sound catches in his throat. He shakes his head.

"Color?" she prompts.

Three snaps. Green.

"Can you snap if I don't color check?"

Another three snaps.

"What about knocking?"

He knocks on the floor.

Good.

Glancing at the iPad he'd surrendered, she considers reiterating the touch command already, but … why? He wanted to be edged. He wanted power exchange. Guaranteeing he has no way to assuage himself unless she relinquishes control seems … perfect.

"Put your hands on the floor and clench your fists," she tells him. 

He does.

She reaches for the next toy: the leather collar he'd worn to the club. She buckles it around his throat, leaving two-fingers worth of space between the strap and his skin. His Adam's apple bobbles underneath her palm as she cups his throat. Pets him.

"Color?"

Three snaps. 

The next toy—a chastity cage—has no tags. It's made of plastic, some assembly required, so he'd spent alone-time last night fitting it to his anatomy and then disinfecting it. She glances down. The cage is considerably smaller than him in his more-than-semi-aroused state, and commanding him to wear it will make the size differential worse. The worst kind of catch-22. 

Shit. She should have thought ahead before winding him up. Given his delight in anticipation, she doubts he'll calm down, even with a timeout. 

"Still wanna wear this?" she asks, dangling the device over his shoulder for him to see.

Three snaps.

What to do. What to—a giggle burbles from within. She claps her hands over her mouth, muffling her, "Oops," that accompanies her broken roleplay. "Sorry," she adds immediately. "Sorry. This … isn't exactly a problem I ever thought I'd have. How to give my Devil a not-erection."

A spluttering sound fills the quiet as the gag muffles his guffaw. This is so weird when he can't talk. She'd gotten used to his copious wisecracks. She struggles to stuff herself back into the box she needs to be in. Dom Chloe. His dom. 

Maybe a cold shower while she watches. Or—oh. Right. She nudges his spine with her knee. 

"Into the kitchen," she tells him.

He rises to his feet, and she pads after him. 

Her freezer is busted. The new one still hasn't arrived. But her refrigerator works. Chills things to 37 degrees. Not ice, but … bracing enough. She sets the chastity cage and padlock on the counter beside him, and pulls out a pair of water bottles—each 1 liter—from the fridge. He's standing by the sink, eyeing them when she turns around.

"Put the hand towels under your feet," she tells him, and he does, laying her pretty pomegranate prints on the floor.

She presses the cold plastic to his bare belly. His skin twitches. Reddens a little. Condensation forms on the frigid surface, but he doesn't back up. Doesn't blink. Doesn't snap his fingers. Doesn't anything but look at her with a dark, hooded expression that speaks novels. 

Yes. Please. Now. I want you. 

Own me.

He _had_ said he's game for sensation play. Before. She'd just … had no idea it would be almost first on the to-do list. Talk about trial by fire. Or, in this case, freezing.

_You're sure_ , she stops herself from asking. From breaking her role again. "Color?" she says instead.

Three snaps.

The hunger in his expression strips her raw.

He really is giving up his power. 

To her. 

She holds the bottle in front of him, letting him gain its measure as the moments crawl and the anticipation stretches almost into pain. His erection doesn't wane.

"Color?"

Three snaps.

"Spread your legs."

He shifts, giving her free access.

She unscrews the cap on the first bottle. Takes a sip from it. The water's cold enough for her to feel it tunneling down her esophagus into her stomach, where the butterflies are kicking up again. "Mmm," she says, smacking her lips awkwardly as she leaves the open bottle on the counter for him to see. Then she takes the second—the container still screwed closed—and brings it up underneath him, between his legs, so he's straddling it. 

His coccyx bumps into the counter as he sucks in a sharp breath. Without giving him a chance to adjust, she dumps out the open bottle, soaking the heart formed by his pubic hair. Water splatters everywhere. He looses a stifled, strangled noise that vibrates in her chest, and his erection wilts like a dehydrated flower. 

"Put on the cage," she tells him. 

Before his balls tuck up, and they have the opposite problem. Luckily, he's quick. Nimble. Even with his fingers shaking, he easily stuffs his penis inside the device, locking the shaft and head behind a wall of transparent plastic. 

"Good?" she says.

He shifts, adjusting, and nods.

She snaps the padlock shut. Makes a show of pocketing the key in her sleep shorts. 

The immediate problem solved, she realizes how close he's standing. Mere inches away. Extremely, very, super naked. Towering over her. She's never really touched him before. Not in a completely intimate setting. Now, he's an open canvas all for her, and—

Swallowing, she steps closer. Until the heat of his skin unfurls across her chest, through her shirt. 

She cups him.

He pants softly around the gag. 

"This is … mine," she tests out, giving the cage a squeeze, not that he'll feel her touch beyond the sliver of added weight. Still, his heft sucks any lingering surreality from the moment. She's holding the Devil prisoner—holding his most sensitive freaking bits captive in her hand—and he's letting her. "I'm touching you right now." She strokes the plastic. "Can you feel it?"

He shakes his head.

She drags the tip of her index finger along his sternum, up his throat, and then cups his chin—squeezes—capturing his gaze. "What about now?"

Slowly, he nods. 

"Color?" she prompts, not releasing him.

Three snaps. He doesn't tear his gaze away.

"Good," she says, stroking his jawline. "You're such a good Devil. You deserve a reward for that."

His eyes roll back as he takes a dragging breath. His body sags against the counter, against her. And then floating becomes finishing. His lower body jerks rhythmically against her belly, like he's pumping into her, but the orgasm is dry. Rasping grunts collect in his throat with each spasm, and then he stills. Starts sagging to his kne—

"You don't get to rest. Did I tell you you could rest?" 

His eyes snap open. He shakes his head.

"Make me coffee—you know how I like it. Come to the living room with the mug when it's done. Oh, and put the water back in the fridge. I might use it again on you later."

Stumbling, he picks himself up.

She leaves as he's reaching with quivering fingers toward her fancy new favor-purchased coffee maker. Hopefully, she's about to perpetrate the most pleasurable torture he's ever received. Time will tell. She hopes she's not totally out of her depth.

The other toys he wants to use sprawl across the couch cushion. Padded leather restraints, a leash. While he's busy in the kitchen, she takes the iPad and connects to her Chromecast, queueing up viewing material she'd found during research. Then she lights jasmine-scented candles, leaving them flickering by the lamp.

The acrid smell of her favorite Irish-creme blend fills the air as it percolates, commingling with the candles' aroma. Water gushes from the faucet. The refrigerator door opens and closes. 

Minutes later, he brings her the World's Greatest Detective mug. The scalding surface of the liquid billows with steam. 

"Very good Devil; thank you," she says, blowing on the liquid as he sinks onto all fours, into another rutting orgasm at her feet. He moans into the gag, his jaw working, his breaths chopping like an axe. A glistening line of spittle spills to the hardwood floor. The cage at his groin dribbles, too. 

"Interesting," she comments, nodding at the mess. "Does that depend on how aroused you are to begin with?" If so, she seems to be making progress.

But he can only shudder in the throes.

The eroticism of him undone undoes her. Her lower body grows heavy and tight and wanting, laden with arousal. That she has this kind of power, this kind of ownership of his body—that he gave it to her willingly, with gusto—is … intoxicating. Seductive. Her hand wanders to the cleft between her thighs before she realizes. Biting her lip, she sits on her fingers instead.

His rhythmic twitching ceases. His eyes seem glazed as he sits up. 

"I bet it feels weird to come in that little cage," she says. "Constricting, maybe? Agonizingly muted?"

Somehow, he finds wits enough to nod.

She can't stop herself from grinning. Tormenting him like this is … unexpectedly fun? Or, well, maybe not unexpectedly. But she didn't expect to enjoy it so _quickly_. She slurps her coffee, wincing. Too hot. She returns the mug to the end table. 

"Color?"

Three snaps.

He's unresisting—perhaps too discombobulated by unexpected orgasms—as she ties his wrists behind his back with the restraints, and then clips the leash in place.

"Color?" she asks.

Three snaps.

"Such a good Devil in your restraints," she says, tugging him to the couch as he hits the stratosphere. "Tell me, do you like that?"

But he's falling apart at her command and can't answer. She shifts, breathing hard, too, as she lowers her head to his ear, nibbling on the lobe, tasting the salt of his skin. "I want you like this—restrained—constricted—helpless—until I let you go. Which won't be soon. Color?"

Three deliciously discombobulated snaps.

She makes him sit on the floor, his back to the edge of the couch, between her knees. She cups her palm over his forehead. Tips his head back. His eyes are dilated, desirous, glistening in the lamplight. Sweat dots his skin. 

She rakes her fingers through his hair, teasing his scalp with the tips of her fingernails. "You're mine, and I love you," she says, coiling the leash around her arm, until it's as tight as it can go without causing him harm. The position forces him to watch the ceiling—or maybe her—at the edges of his field of view. 

Grabbing her iPad, she hits play on her playlist. The television screen flicks on, displaying a video she'd found on a porn-made-for-women-by-women website. Before researching, she hadn't known porn made for women by women _existed_. But it does, and it's actually appealing to her. The depicted women aren't conquests screaming like wildcats of their "enjoyment," and the men aren't he-men. The focus is more on sharing, emotion, and mutual striving for pleasure. 

The first video shows a couple kissing by the woman's front door. They're trying to say goodnight, murmuring, nuzzling, but eventually she urges him inside, and they head to the bedroom. 

Lucifer can watch that. Hear that. Imagine it was them. 

Leaning forward, she drags her palm in slow circles against his torso.

She'll worship him, as he's worshipped her.

Inch by agonizing inch.

* * *

She's never edged anyone before, but she stops worrying about whether she's doing it right when his hungry look won't abate no matter what she does. Hell, she could probably read the dictionary to him, and he'd still be starving for her. 

She gets to know his naked body, the soft sounds of slow, sensual sex spilling from her television in the background. She explores him. Pets him. Teases his nipples. Touches him. Tastes him. Not everywhere. She gives no attention to the cock cage, or to his balls, which are trapped between the cage and the plastic ring that wraps underneath them, lifting them off his groin. 

Her own arousal is an anxious, needing, gnawing ache between her legs. Tingling heat in all her limbs. A flush across her skin. Strained, tight breathing she pauses now and then to re-regulate. An ever-persistent urge to rip off his gag and drink him down like water.

Water.

She _likes_ water bottles. She likes stroking his nipples and belly and inner thighs with wet, cold plastic, while he shivers and spasms. She likes exchanging the bottle for a hot rag and watching him try to make sense of the conflicting sensations. She likes to make him kneel at her feet in supplication, his mouth gagged and his wrists bound. She likes most of all that he does it willingly. Fervently. Happily.

His muscles are taut and trembling, like he wants to rip open his restraints and fuck her against the couch, except he can't. He can't even try. His permission for freedom of movement doesn't allow him to move through physical barriers—she'd had to word it that way to get the command to stick, originally. Which means his available choices are safe wording so she'll release him, or enduring. 

Yet every time she gives him an out, every time she asks, "Color?"

Three snaps answer, not once with hesitation. 

"Want more than this?" she asks, at last. 

He nods, his eyes like embers. 

"How much do you want it?"

He presses his forehead to the floor, crouching at her feet. She curls her bare foot around the back of his skull, holding him down, listening to him panting in the quiet. The sky is lightening, the birds singing. 

"I suppose you've earned it," she decides, trying to sound unimpressed when, secretly, she totally is. She lets him up, leaning over to blow out the candles as she tugs his leash. "Let's go upstairs."

He follows, eager.

* * *

When they reach the bedroom, she removes his restraints. 

"Color?" she prompts.

Three snaps.

"Strip the bed except for the fitted sheet."

He piles the bedding on the floor in the master closet. She tips the clock face down on her nightstand, so he'll have no idea how much time has passed. 

"Lie on the bed," she instructs. "Spread your arms and legs."

He stretches, long and lithe, the leash coiling beside him. She ties his ankles to the bottom corners of the mattress and then tightens the straps, forcing his legs as far apart as they'll comfortably go. He still has give—she doesn't want him to hurt—but not much.

"Color?" she prompts, checking her handiwork.

Three snaps.

She fastens down his left wrist, restraining all but one limb. Without prompting, he snaps twice. Yellow. She freezes. His eyes are suddenly wide, but not with anything resembling desire. 

He'd been fine with his hands tied behind his back, but, now, with his body stretched out, his soft parts exposed as though he were on a rack … not so fine. Her mind wanders to the chains he'd landed in—the chains he'd recently revisited. The edges of the cuffs hadn't been beveled. His wrists and ankles had been bruised almost black, the skin abraded, torn open to bone in places. 

"You okay?" she asks, climbing onto the bed with him. 

He doesn't nod, but he doesn't shake his head either. 

"Color?"

Two snaps, again. 

"Memories?" she asks.

He stares at the ceiling, his breathing hitching like he's swallowing panic. Her first instinct is to yank off the gag and talk to him. Exchange real words with real syllables, not just finger snaps and nods. Her second inclination is to inch off-script. Maybe return to the living room for less intense play. But succumbing to either impulse would likely ruin his chances of achieving subspace. 

He hasn't safe worded; he's only asked for caution, and she trusts his judgment of his comfort levels. She trusts him.

She wraps her arm over his heaving chest. 

"Color?"

Two snaps.

"I'm here," she murmurs, stroking the damp skin over the ridges of his ribs. "Just me. Your Detective. You've given me your power, but it's absolutely yours to reclaim whenever you want. I would never hurt you on purpose, yeah?"

He nods.

"You wanna just lie here for a minute? Get used to this?" 

He nods again. 

"Okay. We can do that." 

She cuddles close, pressing her face against his neck, breathing in his scent. Not a physical reward, but a mental one, she hopes. He reaches for her with his unrestrained hand, and she grips him, intertwining their fingers, giving him a squeeze. They rest for a minute. Two. His breathing evens, a three-second inhalation for a three-second exhalation.

At five minutes, he's looking much calmer. 

More relaxed.

"Color?" 

His response isn't as enthusiastic or immediate as his responses in the living room, but two snaps has shifted back to three. She beams. 

"Ready to keep going?" she asks.

He nods.

"Color?" she double checks.

Three snaps again.

"Okay."

She's careful this time to prepare his other arm slowly, rubbing him from armpit to wrist in long, soothing strokes, before finally fastening him to the bed. She waits a minute, sitting with him, never ceasing contact, murmuring a constant stream of reassurances that she's there, that he only needs to safe word if he wants out. After another color check, she tightens the final strap, stretching him out as far as he'll comfortably go. She loops his leash around the headboard last, securing his head. He can still look around, but not lift his torso.

"Color?" she asks as she steps away to review her handywork.

Three snaps.

"I think you deserve a reward for letting me tie you up, don't you?"

The ball gag shifts. He swallows. A deep noise sticks in his throat. His hips move a little.

"No, no, not that," she says playfully, glancing at his cock cage. "That's not going _anywhere_." Before she can lose her nerve, she thumbs the waistbands of her panties and shorts together, and slides them down her legs, kicking them off. "I meant this." 

She flips her t-shirt over her head and tosses it aside. 

Cool air laves her body. 

Her blush is a lick of fire across her face. 

The leash and collar strain against the headboard as he struggles to watch. She cups her breasts. Drags her fingers suggestively down her torso to her belly and below. She's been staring at his naked body for hours now—seen it repeatedly thanks to his shamelessness—whereas he's never gotten a taste of hers beyond accidental glimpses. And, of course, that stupid movie. But _Hot Tub High School_ 's not exactly up to date. She's nearly forty. Age lines are forming. Stretch marks crisscross her belly and breasts, courtesy of pregnancy. He's immortal, and she's middle-aged, but ….

Her sudden stab of self-consciousness fleets as his fists clench, and his toes curl, like he wants to snap his bindings, pull her into his arms, and kiss her until her vision blots from lack of oxygen. 

Wants to. Can't. 

She smiles. "Like what you see?"

He nods. Vigorously.

"Color?"

Three snaps.

She steps toward the bed and reaches into the top drawer of her nightstand. "So, I was wondering." His eyes trace her movement as she withdraws her little plum-colored vibrator. She'd fully charged and cleaned it last night. "Do you think this works on you? I've never tried it on a man."

Of course, he can't answer.

She grins. "Let's find out, yeah?"

The mattress dips as she settles onto her knees beside his hip. She flicks the switch to the low setting and touches the tip to his left nipple. She marvels, watching it pucker. Trailing to his right nipple, she does the same. 

"I want you to think of me on top of you." She draws a circle around his nipple. "Pretend this is my tongue, pleasuring you. Picture it. Feel it." 

His chest hitches, and he splutters, working at the gag. She meanders along his bicep, smirking as he twitches. 

She scoots down the bed. 

Out of his field of view.

"Touching your knee now," she narrates, and then presses the device to his skin. He shudders, yanking on the restraints. She flicks the switch a few more times, revving the toy to a higher speed, then slowly trails up his inner thigh.

There's no space left inside the cock cage. He's so aroused his skin smashes against the sides of it, crammed into a tiny, tiny tube that won't let him grow. She drags the vibrator along the plastic, filling the quiet with a rapid tat-tat-tat-tat sound. His hips curl like a wave against her hand—mere inches before the restraints halt his upward motion. He moans. 

"Must be very frustrating to be trapped in this itty bitty shell," she says with a pouty look as she draws shapes against the plastic. A star. A heart. Another heart. 

She turns up the device a few more settings, to the max intensity, and strokes his balls with it. Then she lifts the cage and rubs slowly underneath, along his perineum and thighs. His every exhalation is a soft, tortured moan. 

"Do orgasms feel less intense when you're inside this thing?" she asks, cocking her head at him. 

Of course, no answer.

"You think you'd make another mess if I praised you? You're pretty wound up."

Drool trickles from the corners of his mouth. He's panting, his fingers curled into tight fists. Blush of arousal covers his face. His throat. His chest. Plunges down to his navel. He grinds against her hand. As much as he's able. He's vulnerable. Undone. Looking delicious. 

Her insides hurt.

God, she wants to lick him. Taste him. Ride him.

Fuck him.

The thoughts are a hornets nest, spun up inside her brain.

She swallows. Licks her lips. Swallows again. 

The effort of turning off the vibrator and stepping away from the bed nearly kills her. But she does it. He makes a noise of protest that could almost be called a scream.

"I guess it'll be a mystery," she says, trying to sound bored, and then sinks with a sigh into the chair in the corner. Well out of his view. "Just sitting over here. Don't mind me unless you want to."

Another audible protest.

"Color?" she checks.

Three snaps.

Okay, then. 

"Think about me riding you while we wait."

He sucks in a breath, spurred by her command.

She picks up her phone and switches to one of her favorite games, but she's almost too dizzy with wanting to play it. Holy shit. Herculean, indeed. But in a few rounds, she'll start again.

And again.

And again.

* * *

She loses track of how many times she teases and toils, taking him to the very edge of orgasm—so close the only reason he doesn't finish is probably because he can't. Not unless she tells him he's a good Devil. 

She plants lurid fantasies into his head. Commands him what to think about and when, while she strokes his every corner, crease, crevice. Yet, every time she color checks, he answers with three snaps. He wasn't kidding when he snarked to John about his stamina.

The symphony of the session crescendos and quiets and crescendos again. The whir of the vibrator. The creaking of leather. His ragged panting; his moans and groans and agonized, needing rasps. The rustle of the fitted sheet as he tries to writhe and buck but can't. 

When she removes the cage, allowing what was trapped and constricted to grow to its full extent, low and heavy against his belly, he almost sobs into the gag. 

The room is hot. Sweltering. Or, maybe, that's her.

She squirts a dab of KY into her hand and lies along the length of his body. He bobs like a boat on the sea as the mattress shifts, and she settles, her head propped onto her other elbow, inches from his face. She peers into his eyes as she reaches down and cups him, touching for the first time without plastic intervening. His skin is hot, feather-soft, but he shivers. The lube mixes with his sweat. 

"I bet you really wanna come, don't you."

He nods. 

She massages him, up and down and up again, then cups the vibrator's boomerang shape against the head of his shaft, holding him until he moans. And squirms. And pants. The heat of friction from the device almost sears her hand before she lets it skip away, across the bed, still whirring.

She shifts his balls against her palm, like a pair of eggs that might crack, delighting in the soft groan he makes against the gag. They finally have freedom, too, instead of being mashed to his cock by the plastic ring. She massages them a little. Gently.

"This is mine. You're mine. You come when I allow, and that's not yet."

His eyelids dip.

"Imagine after this is all over," she murmurs, shifting her grip to his shaft. "And you're not compelled, and we're both free, and Hell is taken care of. We can kiss—love—as much as we want, whenever the desire strikes, in whatever context." She pumps her fist, up and down, up and down, varying the rhythm. "This could be my mouth. Or my … my." She struggles with the word. "You know." 

A soft gust of breath blusters from him. Like he's laughing. 

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I get the irony, okay?" On so many damned levels. "Shut up."

Which only seems to amuse him more.

She changes her cadence. Drags her fingers from his base to the tip and then pinches. Once. Again. The laughter drains from him as he loses himself to her touch. The discombobulated sounds he makes delight her. She presses the flat of her palm to the head of his cock and twists like she's unscrewing the cap from a jar. His ragged, pleasured groan against the gag makes her smile. 

"Like that one, huh?"

He can't exhale without making noise—desirous, disintegrating—but she continues, repeating the motion. Again, again. 

"Color?"

No immediate reply.

"Color?" she repeats.

Three snaps, albeit slow to arrive, like he's losing himself, losing the room, losing everything but her. Sweat creeps down her cleavage—her spine—her body _burns_ , watching him. Wishing she could have him fully. Now. Right now.

Still, she continues. 

Past the point of pleasure. Into delirium. As his digits curl, his muscles flex, and he bites the gag so hard she worries the ball might pop. He stares like she's his universe in that moment. The center of a flower. A brilliant speck in a featureless void. 

"I love you," she tells him, moving in a frenzy against his skin. "I choose you." Just like he requested. Rapture blossoms in his eyes. "You're such a good Devil." The words are thick in her throat, overwhelmed. "My favorite, really."

He arches backward, trembling, ecstatic. His abdomen swells as his muscles clench in tandem. The leather whines, straining to hold him down. He seems to hang in that moment of completion for an age. An eon. An eternity. And then he kicks to life in her hand, spurting onto his belly as she pumps him dry, riding the wave with him. 

"You're so good," she continues, stroking him. "You're perfect, and you're mine; I'd choose you every time."

She praises him again and again and again, ravishing him, until his erection subsides, and he can barely twitch whenever she murmurs, "Good Devil. You're so good." 

Until, despite her prompting, "Color?" his hands and arms hang limply in his restraints, unmoving. If it were possible to die of pleasure, she thinks she'd be on trial for mass murder. 

"You awake?" she whispers, grinning as she pushes her fingers through his sweaty hair.

No answer.

"Color?"

Again, nothing. But he _is_ watching her, his eyelids barely slitted.

Hope scorches.

She loosens his gag, pulling it from his mouth. Glistening, spindly trails of spit come away with it as she dumps it onto the mattress beside him. He licks his lips and swallows, shallow breaths rasping.

"Lucifer, can you hear me?"

He beams, baked.

"Color?"

Nothing.

"Lucifer. Color?"

"Uh"—he pauses, drifting, not like he can't decide, but like he can't remember the options—"hmm?" He smiles again, staring up at her, his face flush with sex. 

Subspace. Yes. This has to be.

She presses her lips to his cheek. "Kiss me if you want," she whispers, heart pounding. She strokes his ribs, encouraging him. "True love's kiss. Right now. Kiss me."

At first, he's motionless, and she wonders if, maybe, she went too far. Below subspace to somewhere baser, where commands don't even register. But then, blinking, dazed, he nudges her with his mouth. Close but not quite. She grips his chin, aiming for him. 

"I love you," she murmurs again. 

Finally, he presses his lips to hers. An action she reciprocates. A raspy soft sated sound fills his throat, like he's trying to reply, "And I you, Detective," but his vocal cords are toast. 

She kisses him harder, waiting, hoping, aching for an answer. A release. Something. 

Anything.

The moments pass in silence.

"I _love_ you," she repeats, in case the magic needs emphasis.

But … nothing.

Nothing happens at—


	43. "out of whack"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Thank you for all the lovely feedback and kind words—they definitely brightened up my holiday—and thanks for being patient with me while I unwound a bit. Boy, did I need that. Anyway, onward to the finish!

"It's wrong," he says, with sudden, sharp clarity. 

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"It's _my_ piano."

His hands twitch in the restraints as his drunk-y look evaporates. He grimaces like a cat scenting something rancid. A thick non-word stutters in his throat, easing into a haunting, wet giggle.

"Huh?" she says, frowning. "What's—"

She flinches backward as choppy exhaled laughter morphs into inhaled ictal screaming. The sound is awful, a banshee at the gallows. He stiffens, every muscle contracting at once. The restraints snap tight and groan. His eyes roll back.

Fuck. Fuck. She scrambles to unclip the leash from his collar so he won't strangle when he starts to convulse. She frees his hands next. His arms drift to his sides, crossing at the wrists, his fists clenched. The scream stops. He jerks forward at the waist, and then his whole body is sucked into the motion, repeating and repeating and repeating.

The room flares brilliant white.

She can't close her eyes fast enough.

Light impales her retinas, plunging sharp spears of pain into brain matter.

"Please, don't nuke my bedroom!" she yelps as sparkles like cut diamonds in sunlight blanket the backs of her eyelids. She claps her hands over her face, giving up on his ankle restraints and beelining for the door, stumbling, fumbling. "Lucifer, please!"

The light winks out.

Crying, she sags to the floor in the hallway. Fuck. Fuck. The restraints she left attached snap and whine while he convulses. Maybe this is the compulsion leaving his body? Or, maybe not, since even mid-seizure he'd complied with the command not to burn— 

Sudden silence.

"Lucifer?" she calls, straightening. "You awake?"

Nothing.

She peeks around the doorframe. He's resting on his side, his legs scissored, his body facing away. Except—

"Oh, my God," she murmurs, striding back to him. 

His back is covered in pale, blackish sweat. So is his front. Viscous black fluid oozes from his nose—pulses from his ears and eyes like sticky, tacky tar. There's a black stain on the sheet, too, where he likely lost control of his bladder. A lurid memory fills her mind of spectral chains and wriggling worms. Is this the remains of that?

"Lucifer?"

He stares blankly into space, breathing softly.

"I'm here, yeah?" 

She unhooks his ankles from the thick cuffs, which allows his legs to pull into a fetal position as he tips fully onto his side. The black gook, still streaming from his eyes like tears, replenishes whenever she tries to wipe it away.

His expression is shellshocked. Out of body. Like there should be "out to lunch" signs hung behind his dilated pupils. 

"Lucifer? You with me?" she tries, stroking his face. "You had a seizure, I think."

Nothing.

Worry coils. But seizure victims can be pretty confused afterward, particularly with seizures that affect consciousness. Lucifer had been groggy for hours after his last one, when he'd crash-landed into her kitchen. 

She dabs at his nose. That fluid, too, gets replaced immediately with fresh runoff. Like something evil, now dying, had trapped his brain—his body—in a chokehold, and now his system's been jumpstarted into ejecting the smut all at once.

She grabs clean towels and sheets from the linen closet. 

He's lying in the same position, staring into space when she returns.

"Lucifer?"

He makes a sick sound—not a word, just … misery in a syllable—as he reaches for her. She grabs his palm. His fingers twitch like he can't hold his hand still. And then his muscles bulge, contracting again. Another croaking scream rakes itself across his vocal cords. Her gut swoops. 

"Okay," she tells him, soothes him, rubbing his shoulder. "Okay; it's okay. I'm here." 

Is it okay?

God.

His body seizes again, thrashing and out of control as he flexes at the elbows, knees, and hips. More black ooze, this time as drool. The convulsions slow, spacing out unevenly, and then cease. He sags against the bed, sucking in sharp, ragged breaths as he starts to respirate normally again.

His body shivers. 

She covers him in towels to keep him warm, waiting to see if he's going to resume convulsing, but he doesn't. Not for fifteen minutes. Not for thirty. The black tears trickle and then stop. When sense returns to his expression, he appears like he just stepped out of an _X-Files_ episode.

She gives him a watery smile. "Hey. With me yet? I think"—hope—"your compulsion is in my sheets now."

He doesn't speak. His gaze doesn't track hers. He looks past her—through her. He's still drooling a little. Trembling, too. The awful silence makes the snake in her gut twist. 

"Lucifer?"

His body goes lax. Like he just … ran out of fuel to function. Which … explicable. Completely explicable. He'd been exhausted _before_ she'd edged him for hours. _Before_ he'd had two seizures. 

Still, she takes photos. Of the black gook around his eyes, ears, and nose. Of his discolored sweat. Quickly describing the symptoms, she shoots an e-mail including photos off to the address John Constantine had circled on his business card, subject line: "URGENT: Is this normal after de-cursing/spelling?"

Lucifer doesn't rouse while she cleans him up with warm washcloths. He doesn't rouse as she puts fresh sheets on the bed—not even as she rolls him out of the way to stretch the fitted sheet underneath his heavy body. He doesn't rouse. 

Her phone bings. Her e-mail. 

_Magic and curses can both have backlash_. _A bit like pulling a serrated knife from a wound. And this thing was the worst of both I've ever seen. Wouldn't worry unless it keeps getting worse. -J_

_P.S. No luck on the La Brea soul or the one near Hollywood. Sorry love. "Ghosts" are out of my league._

Well, that's a big fucking bucket of reassuring and not.

Daylight streams through the windows, illuminating the bed in a bath of harsh light. She flips up the clock at last. 12:04 p.m. Lunchtime, though she isn't hungry. She flops briefly onto the mattress beside Lucifer, her eyes burning with exhaustion as she stares at the ceiling.

 _Hey,_ she texts Dan. _Just checking in. Hope you're okay._

An ellipsis flashes on the screen, indicating he's typing a response. She waits, resting her eyes. When her phone vibrates, she squints at the bright LCD.

 _I'm fine Chlo,_ he's said. _Really. Enjoy ur time off ok?_

Another ellipsis.

_Arraignment's tomorrow @ 2. Prosecutor thinks no chance of bail._

_Do they need me?_ she asks.

 _Already told em I'd go,_ he replies. _Think ur in the clear._

_Thanks._

_No prob. Love you._

_Love you too._

She rests her phone facedown against her breastbone. Lucifer's lying on his stomach, the sunlight turning the tips of his hair bright like incandescent filaments in a lightbulb. His breaths are soft and even, his body still and sprawled. She resists the urge to stroke his face, not wanting to risk waking him from healing sleep.

Her head is swimming.

But she can't rest.

Not yet.

With a sniff, she carries her phone into the hallway, dialing Linda's number. "Hey," she says as soon as Linda picks up. "Can you tell me about seizures? I know first-aid stuff, but not much else."

* * *

The phone call is quick, as Linda explains seizures are sudden, uncontrolled electrical disturbances in the brain. Lucifer's got unchecked lightning storms exploding in his skull. Common causes include: brain injury or infection, stress, sleep loss, and a myriad of other things. 

Given the context of the compulsion, Linda is of the opinion it's probably safest to let Lucifer sleep, rather than dragging him into the hospital for invasive treatment. That's two "experts"—one magical, one medical—agreeing Chloe should wait, let nature take its course. 

After yanking down the window shades, blanketing the room with comfortable, cool darkness, she climbs into bed with him, dumping her phone on her nightstand as she tugs the comforter up to their collarbones.

"I'm right here, yeah?" she assures him quietly. "Let me know if you need anything."

She's been up more than a day. 

She's been aroused without satiation.

She's been stressed.

She hurts from hoping.

The warmth of his body makes a nice pillow.

She doesn't wait long for sleep.

* * *

"I need the thing for … ow." 

Her nightstand drawer squeals in protest. Boxes and papers shift. She squints. A pale wall blocks her view. 

Reaching out, her fingers brush cold skin. 

"Lucifer?" she asks.

"I need the thing."

She rubs her eyes groggily, sitting up. The clock says 3:57 p.m. Thin but intense strips of light hugging the edges of the blinds confirm.

He's kneeling on the floor beside the bed, his fingers gripping the sides of the drawer, his expression flummoxed. _The Wicked King_ —the book she's been reading—stares back at him. 

"What thing?" she asks.

"It was here before."

"What was?"

"Bloody … the _thing_." His face is pallid and sick-looking. "You … _you_." Like he's so fried he forgot her name. "You, I …."

"Chloe," she says softly.

"Yes. Yes, I …." He pinches his nose between shaking, steepled hands, his fingers meeting at a peak over the bridge. Sagging against the bed frame, he murmurs, "My head is bloody _pounding_ ," against his palms. 

Dots connect. "Acetaminophen? Is that what you want?" 

"Yes. Yes, I'm …." His voice trails away.

"You had a seizure," she says. "Two, actually." Brains can take time to unscramble—she'd known that even before talking to Linda. She squeezes his shoulder. "Do you remember earlier?"

But he doesn't answer. His skin is damp with discolored sweat, visible in the darkness only by how strange it makes him look. His eyelashes are crusted, and his ear canals are stained with black that's also run down the sides of his throat and dried. His upper lip is black, too, along with the corners of his mouth, and a bit of his chin. 

Worry makes her ache. 

"I put the acetaminophen back in the medicine cabinet the other night," she says. She scoots around him, pushing her legs over the side of the mattress. "Hold on; I'll get it for you."

He sits on the floor, staring dazedly ahead as she pads to the bathroom. She hopes the fact that he's followed every command she's given so far doesn't mean anything. She hopes he's just overwhelmed. Grabbing the pill bottle and a glass of water, she—

Thump. Thump. Thump-thump-thump.

The sound carries down the hall.

Fuck.

She dashes back to the bedroom.

His eyes have rolled left in their sockets as his arm convulses, his elbow slapping rhythmically against the bedframe. Black spittle spills from his lips and between gnashing teeth. She sets the water glass and pills by the wall before dragging him away from the bed frame. The convulsions spread to his left leg as she's tipping him onto his side, but soon he stills, and his pupils drift back to center. His nose is weeping black "blood" again.

"I'm here," she soothes. "I'm here. I'm—"

"I don't … feel," he says in a small voice before his words trail into a confused inarticulate jumble.

"I know you don't feel well," she replies, lost. "Is it just your head, or …?" Does she even _try_ to stop the "bleeding?" If the black stuff is bad magic, maybe she shouldn't try to clot it. She dabs at the mess with the edge of her bathrobe. He doesn't move. He's too docile. Nothing about this seems right or—"Lucifer?"

"It's wrong."

"What's wrong?"

"My piano is … mine."

"Of course it is."

"It's _mine_." Grief swells in his tone—his expression. "Please, don't."

"I'm not doing anything to your piano," she assures him. "I promise."

He stares at the baseboards through a thin film of tears. "Please, don't make me."

"I wouldn't," she soothes, baffled, throat aching with unshed grief. "Want the Tylenol now?" 

But he seems … completely checked out.

She spreads an old drop cloth across the floor for him, then drags a pillow off the bed to prop underneath him. Blankets, next. He's asleep by the time she sets a box of tissues and the glass of water by his head. 

* * *

The vomiting starts around 10 p.m. Black, evil bile, pouring from him, until he's too spent to clutch the trashcan she brings for him, and he vomits on himself instead, and then the floor as he rolls weakly onto his side. Over and over, he retches. Until he's empty, and shaking, nothing left to bring up. The sound of him weeping, bankrupt, exhausted, ill, poleaxes her. 

"I'm here," she tells him, over and over. "I'm here."

But she doesn't feel like enough.

* * *

More seizures during the night. Two. But neither produce gruesome ictal screams, or consume his whole body. The first, only his leg kicks softly against the baseboards. The second, rhythmic lip smacking, and wet bedding again. The first makes his nose and ears bleed—just a brief, black trickle. The second, nothing. Neither wake him up. Improvement? He sleeps on the floor, healing—or so she hopes—and after cleaning him up, and changing the blankets _again_ , she leaves him to rest. 

* * *

When Friday morning arrives, she's a shell of a person, so exhausted from waking repeatedly overnight that her head is spinning. It's like … Trixie was born last week. Chloe thinks about coffee, but coffee would be a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. She thinks about eating, but stress has her so nauseated the very idea makes her dry heave. 

"You gotta stop sending addresses for a bit, yeah?" Chloe, cognizant of Lucifer sleeping upstairs, rasps into her phone. 

"Sorry, am I going too fast?" Ella replies on the other end of the line.

Chloe rubs her eyes. She sits at the base of the steps, hugging the railing with one hand, cupping her phone to her ear with the other. The device, which had exited "do not disturb" mode at 7:30 a.m., hadn't realized it isn't a workday, just a Hell day. She'd been woken promptly by the bing-bing-bing of arriving texts.

"He can't deal with ghosts right now," Chloe says eventually. "He's really sick."

"What? Why? What happened?"

"Remember how I said there's more SNAFU, but it was personal?"

"Yeah," Ella replies slowly.

"Well, the cure fucking _sucked_."

"Oh. But … there was a cure? You said cure, right?"

The ache in Chloe's chest burgeons. "God, I _hope_ so."

* * *

Chloe sleeps, catching up just enough to function before John arrives mid-afternoon in an old-fashioned taxi, which waits at the curb for him. "Hey," she says, when she answers the door. "Come on in."

John peers curiously at her apartment, his attention lingering on her destroyed kitchen. "When he arrived the week before last," she explains. "He had a seizure then, too."

"Ah," John says, in a hesitant, unconvinced tone, the curiosity in his gaze refusing to wane. 

He regards her messy living room, filled with magazines and clutter. The dirty dishes in the sink. The door to Trixie's bedroom, adorned by a smattering of drawings—replacements for the artwork Lucifer's incendiary arrival had smote from the wall. John's attention lingers on a sketch of the stick-Devil in question, whose white wings, red horns, and whiplike tail are on prominent display as he clutches stick-Trixie's hand. Both figures are smiling. 

"She drew that before she found out the horns and tail were a myth," Chloe says, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

But John only shakes his head, stepping back like he's embarrassed he got caught snooping. She offers him coffee or tea, which he declines. 

"Have you got any samples of the black stuff from your pictures?" he asks instead.

"Um." She thinks back. The sheets and blankets are already in the laundry. "On some tissues, I think. I can get them."

When she brings John a crumpled Kleenex, still tacky with goo that hasn't quite dried, he clasps it between his palms, incanting something softly. His face drains of color. He pushes the tissue away, looking like he might throw up. 

"Oh, that's spent magic, all right," he says, grimacing like he sniffed a de-gloved soul. "Bloody awful stuff."

"But … spent," Chloe says. "Spent as in done. Kaput."

"Yes, it's inert now. Not harmful, only vile—and even then, only if you've a sense for it like me."

"So … Lucifer?"

"I'd wager his side effects are from excreting this mess, not the spurse itself, but I'll check him over whilst I'm here, just to confirm, all right?"

"Okay." She nods, trying not to devolve into a blubbering, crushed-by-hope disaster. "Okay."

She takes John to the bedroom, where Lucifer is sleeping on the floor, only small tufts of hair peeking from the blankets. She pulls down the comforter, exposing his face, neck, and ear. "Lucifer"—she strokes his hair—"John's here."

"Hmm," he rumbles without moving. 

"Still this tired, eh?" John asks. "How long since your lip lock?"

"Yesterday," Chloe replies. "Before lunch."

John looses a sharp, low whistle, reiterating, "Nasty bloody stuff," as he sits on the edge of the bed above Lucifer and reaches for the—

"Hey," Chloe snaps, and John freezes, his fingers outstretched. She nods at Lucifer. " _Ask_ first."

John boggles, like … this is not the Lucifer he knew before—the Lucifer with no sense of modesty. Still, John amends his approach, asking, "Luci, love, is it all right if I pull down the blanket? I need to see. Like we did in the precinct."

"Yes," Lucifer croaks in reply, "bloody get on with it."

At least he's responding in cogent sentences now. That's … improvement. She lingers by the wall to give them space, as John pulls the comforter down to Lucifer's ankles, revealing him sprawled on his stomach, breathing softly, the swell of his bare ass a perfect curve in the dim daylight. 

Lucifer slumbers through most of John's inspection—more magical poking, prodding, palpating, more incanting in other languages. By the tail end, though, the white sparks making his muscles twitch and shift under his skin are too great a distraction for sleep, and Lucifer stares blankly across the drop cloth instead. Which is weird. He's just … off. No wisecracks or rejoinders. Sleeping through intimate handling by a frenemy—exposure that only days ago had been enough to cause him _savage_ amounts of stress.

"Lucifer, you okay?" she prods.

He blinks slowly, but says nothing.

John finishes, yanking the comforter back up. Lucifer curls away almost immediately, re-cocooning.

"I didn't see anything," John says as they step into the hall. 

She closes the door behind them, giving Lucifer some peace. "But you couldn't see anything before either," she murmurs as the latch clicks. "Not without salt."

"I could detect a malevolence; I knew an in-depth inspection was warranted," he counters. "That's why I asked for salt in the first place." 

"So, what does that mean? What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, I think you cured your Devil." He gawks at her like she invented cold fusion or something. "Bloody hell; never thought I'd see the day love did anything for the likes of _him_. I stand bloody corrected." 

The frothing white wave she'd been holding back before sweeps in like a tide, crushing, absolute. Her chest constricts. The hallway blurs. She sucks in a shaky breath. And then another. And then the maelstrom drowns her in a swirl of conflicting emotions. Relief, that her best friend—her partner, her teammate—will finally be free again to follow his own desires. Love, for him. For _John_ , for helping them despite bitter misgivings. But most of all despair, here, in the deluge, at the beginning of an inevitable end.

She's pulled into a tight embrace. "There, there, love." John pats her back awkwardly. "It's all right. Shh. It's over now."

"No, it's not," she says in a tiny voice. "He'll _leave_."

"Shh."

Even though he's probably ready to jig for joy, he doesn't. Nor does he laugh at her distress. He's gentle. Compassionate. His tan trench coat is soft beneath her cheek, smelling not so faintly of an ashtray. Which … kind of reminds her of Lucifer in a much less refined state.

"Come on, love," John urges. "How's about I make _you_ some tea?"

She lets him lead her downstairs, greedily taking the comfort offered.

* * *

When John leaves, there's a text waiting for her from Dan.

_Arraigned. No bail. Cade's cooked._

_Great,_ she types back. _Thanks._

_:thumbs up:_

Setting her phone aside again, she drops onto the couch to watch some of her Netflix queue, too wired to sleep, too tired to think, let alone think straight. Her eyes ache from crying, but her belly is warm with tea. John, for all his rough, sardonic edges and seething inner turmoil, is a goodhearted man. She drifts on that thought, staring emptily at the kaleidoscope on her television screen. 

__

* * *

Long after Netflix prompts her, "Are you still watching?" she blinks awake, smacking her lips as she wipes drool off her chin. Her neck has a crick. She'd crashed. Big time. The air outside the windows is dark, the only thing lighting the living room the sharp, silver glow of the waiting television. 

Stumbling to her feet, she stretches, grabs a bottle of water to chug, and then heads upstairs. 

The bathroom door hangs wide open, fingers of steam curling into the hallway like claws. Fog covers the mirror in an opaque slick. The soft rush of water fills the quiet, and the air inside the room is thick and sweltering. 

A small smile tugs at her face—he _must_ feel better if his fastidiousness is overcoming his exhaustion. 

"Lucifer?" she calls.

Her smile fades when he doesn't answer.

"Lucifer?"

She sweeps aside the shower curtain, just to make sure he hasn't hit his head amid another seizure. But, no, he's not unconscious. He's sitting on the fiberglass tub floor, his arms wrapped around his knees, his body underneath the spray. Water mats his hair to his scalp, and a lobster hue sprawls down his spine in bright mottled splotches. He stares blankly at the water as it spirals into the drain.

Maybe an absence seizure?

"Lucifer?" she prods again. "You okay?"

"I'm … empty," he says. 

Not an absence seizure. His words are distant, though, almost like he's having an out of body experience. Like … he's dissociating again.

 _Just be there,_ Linda echoes. _Spend time with him. Make sure he knows he's not alone._

"Can I come in with you?" she asks.

"If you like." 

She shrugs out of her bathrobe, and steps into the spray. Hot, tiny needles stab her skin. She leans forward, over his head, adjusting the temperature from scalding to comfortably hot—he doesn't look up to marvel at the display of breasts. He hardly seems to register she's there at _all_. 

"Is this okay for you?" she asks. "It was pretty hot before."

He shrugs.

"Can I hug you?" 

"If you like."

She lowers herself onto the floor behind him, sinking into the full brunt of the spray as she wraps her arms around his broad shoulders. He withdraws his arms from his knees, reaching up to hook his fingers over her forearms instead. His thumbs stroke the skin along her ulnas. The most interactive he's been since their scene. 

"I'm here," she says, pressing close, relishing his heat and nearness. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well, but I'm here."

"I don't feel unwell; I feel _empty_."

"I don't understand."

He stares at nothing. "I used to ache. Every day. Every moment." His fingers tighten around her wrists, his nails digging into her skin—she knocks softly on his sternum, and his grip releases, like he hadn't been aware he was clenching. "This thing was … in me. Crowding me out. Crushing me. Like kudzu on my insides, or …." He takes a sharp breath, sounding close to weeping. "I didn't even know it anymore, the pain was so ubiquitous. And, now, it's"—another sharp breath, like breathing hurts him—"it's _gone_." 

"Isn't that good?" 

"I've no idea," he replies miserably. He glances over his shoulder at her. His eyes are red and wet, the black crust washed away. He looks old. And tired. But clean. "It's lovely to have space in my head again. It's only that I …." He searches for words. "I feel _empty_."

She sinks against his body, pulling him tight to hers, as she tries to imagine things from his point of view. _Have you ever felt so constricted for so long, it hurts to breathe when you're finally free?_ he'd said, and that sensation had evolved from simply having a longer leash. What he's experiencing now is the first real freedom he's had in who knows how long. It's hope and triumph, doubt and caution, exhaustion, all rolled into a tangled mental cacophony. It's … having his life be his for the taking—having possession of self—after so long without, it's _weird_. 

A vise squishes her heart over the idea that autonomy and painlessness feel wrong to him.

"It might take time for things to normalize," she murmurs against his damp skin. "I totally get feeling out of whack after all this."

"Yes." A wry, weeping laugh fills the space between them as he raises his fingers to form air quotes. "Out of 'whack.' I suppose that's accurate."

She holds him tightly. "You kept talking about your piano." 

"Did I?"

"Yeah." They shift positions gradually, until she's sitting against the back wall of the tub, and he's cradled against her like they're taking a bath, him as the little spoon. "Did you remember something? About your piano?"

"I've … no idea." 

She presses her cheek to his, nuzzling him. "That's okay. Don't worry about it."

"I do recall before," he says. "Our scene. Was that today?"

"Early yesterday morning. You've been pretty zonked."

"It's … Friday?"

"Night, yeah." 

He blinks like he's stunned he can't account for such a large chunk of time. She kisses him. It's nice to actually _talk_ with him again. 

"Regardless," he decides eventually, "our scene was perfect. My favorite fantasy of you, acted out in exquisite detail. Thank you."

"I just wish we could do a scene where you get to stayin subspace for a while." She _really_ wants to give him that. A gradual comedown with lots of comfort and cuddles and love. She hates she might never have the chance.

"In due time, I'm certain," he says.

A whorl of stress tightens in her belly. "Do we … have due time?"

He doesn't answer, which is answer enough. Her eyes water, but she shoves her impending grief into her mental box of "deal with it later." 

"So, you're gonna check Hell for Amenadiel and Azrael next?" she asks.

"Well, I'm not bloody doing it _now_ , darling," he assures her. "I doubt I could smite a fly, let alone Lilith's horde."

"You will, though," she says sadly. "Soon. You heal fast."

"Yes," he admits. 

"So, you're gonna check?"

"That seems a prudent first step, no?"

"But what if Lilith has another spurse thing ready? Some kind of snare? What if this is exactly what she's been waiting for?"

"And what if she doesn't?" he counters. "What if it isn't? You heard John. This 'spurse' was neither small nor simple. What's the likelihood she's managed it again? Am I to leave my siblings to rot in her clutches because it _might_ be dangerous?"

"Bakasura could have been lying."

"Or he might have been telling the truth. Detective, the uncertainty is part of what's _destroying_ me."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry." She tips her head against his, stroking his belly with pruned fingers. "I'm just worried for you. Is there at least a way to mitigate your risk?"

He has no answer.

"Never mind. It doesn't matter now." Now is still theirs. "Can you hit the spigot switch with your toe or something?" 

Remarkably, he can, and the shower morphs into a bath as he nudges the drain shut, too. She tightens her arms around him, and they share the warmth of the water. The roar is a soothing rumble. As wet heat envelopes their bellies, his head tips against hers, and her awareness goes a little fuzzy.

They doze.

Until, "Water's cold," she murmurs. 

"Yes," he agrees.

She doesn't open her eyes as she strokes his hot skin. Until, at last, he leans forward to unplug the drain, freeing her. A gurgling noise fills the quiet.

"Lemme get you a towel," she says.

"I'm not a bloody invalid just because my bloody brain got banjaxed," he grouses, rising to his feet before she can. He slogs through the water and steps out onto the bathmat. "I'll get it myself. Mine _and_ yours."

She grins up at him, watching as he yanks the towels off the racks.

"What?" he asks.

Her grin widens. She rests her elbows on the edge of the tub, cupping her chin look up at him. "I gave you a command, and you basically just told me to stuff it."

He almost tips into the towel rack as he stills. "Oh, I did, didn't I?"

"Sure did!" When he doesn't move, she climbs to her feet, grabbing a towel he'd liberated. "Lucifer?"

"Do it again?" he asks softly.

"What?"

"Command me."

"Um. Give yourself a towel turban immediately."

"No," he says. His own towel drops to his feet as he clutches at his stomach, at his groin, a bewildered expression on his face. His frantic exploration lowers to his cock, and he pumps himself once, twice, his foreskin gliding with his grip. He cups himself next, shifting his balls in his hand like he's searching for lumps. No erection surges to life. His attentions garner a bit of growth, but growth commensurate with his clinical inspection. He isn't panting, or strained, or rutting, or pleading. "Oh, I felt nothing." He gives her an expectant look. "Again?"

"Recite _War and Peace_."

"No!" he delights, and then he laughs. The sound is brilliant, bright gold in what had been a sea of gray. "No, I will not." 

He really could leave now.

He could leave _now_.

"Please, don't go," she says softly, begging again, but she doesn't care. She doesn't _care_. "I don't care if it's selfish; I don't _care_ if there're demons—we'll take them as they come. You can catch them really fast; I know you can. And now we know to look. _Please_ , _don't leave me again._ " 

His mirth cracks like glass. "Detective—Chloe—I _can't_. I never wanted it, but Hell is mine, and I cannot shirk it any longer."

The lump in her throat hurts too much to speak.

"I promise you, darling," he murmurs, running his fingers through her wet hair, "I _promise,_ I've no intentions of leaving forever until we've had a real chance to talk. For now, I'm simply worried for my siblings, and the stability of this Earth's reality. My only immediate plan is to pop to Hell for a look see, and Bob's your uncle. Really, that's all."

"Okay," she rasps, trying to right her world from spinning off its axis. "Okay."

He tips up her chin and kisses her, soft and yearning. "I'm not going anywhere now. I'm too bloody tired to go anywhere now."

"I'm sorry I'm making it worse."

"Quite the opposite." He tilts his head. "Chloe, you _freed_ me. Thank you."

She pushes closer, clinging, her nose and cheek pressed against his chest, and he holds her, stroking her spine. His heartbeat pounds through his sternum. She focuses on that in the quiet, counting in her head. That's one beat for her. Two. Three. How many until he's gone? 

"Come to bed with me?" he says as she reaches seventeen. "You seem exhausted as well." 

He isn't smirking with his innuendo, only baldly wanting. His eyes burn like coals. 

She wants him, too. Needs him. Loves him. 

_Loves_ him.

"Yeah," she says. "Okay."


	44. "meant it as a metaphor"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for the kind words! I really appreciate them! I'm sorry I've been a little brief in my replies this go 'round—I spent literally all of Friday (I think about 15 hours in all) editing 16k words (3 chapters), so that I'll be able to stay ahead of where I'm posting. I was fried by the evening and didn't have much left in me this weekend after that.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy :)

The sky is purple-hued and starless from light pollution as they return to her bedroom. A salt-scented breeze sneaks through the tiny slits in her blinds. She sits on the edge of the mattress, making a grab for the brush on her nightstand as the November nighttime air laves her back. Shivering a little, she flips her hair over her face and drags the brush through wet tangles.

His bare feet come into view, framed by the halo of her dangling hair, and she freezes, looking up. He hasn't gone around to his side. Instead, he's holding out his hand beside her, unabashedly naked in the soft lamplight. So is she, really, save for one loosely tucked towel. 

"May I?" he asks. 

She holds out the brush for him. He takes it, sitting beside her. She turns away to give him better access, clutching the towel to her body. As he cups her head with a warm palm, the brush rasps against her scalp. 

"Is this all right?" he says.

"Hmm," she replies, a relaxed hum. "Yeah."

He's so careful with tangles, she hardly notices more than a few soft tugs here and there. Her grip on the towel loosens, and she drops her hands to her sides. The world around her fuzzes out.

"I forgot how good this feels," she murmurs.

"Did you?"

"Nobody's done it for me in a while."

After a few more strokes, he stops, and she warbles a pitiful protest when she sees the brush beside her hip. He fills the vacancy with his hands, pulling his fingers through the wet strands. Stroking her. Delightful tingling begins in her belly and sparks to the ends of her limbs. He drags his digits gently backward from her hairline, down the slope of her neck, and then he grips her shoulders. 

"Lucifer," she says. Not a protest. Insistence.

The bed creaks as he leans closer, his warm breath against her neck. He presses his lips to the pulse point. She tips her head toward her other shoulder, giving him more room. He kisses. Nips. Kisses again.

"Will you turn around?" he asks, the question a rumbling, husky murmur. 

She climbs fully onto the bed, kneeing her brush out of the way before resting her back against the headboard, her legs crossed, the edges of her towel digging sharply into her thighs. He crawls forward on all fours, looming into her space, his head tilting. He searches her gaze with his own, his dark eyes only inches away, offering his intentions baldly in his yearning expression. 

She wants him, too. 

In a big, bright, brilliant way that makes her ache.

"Kiss me," she says. "Please."

He leans forward on his knees and hands, and his lips brush hers. Hesitantly, at first, like he's debating his approach. Then she's bumping back against the headboard as he advances, tasting her, touching her, knowing her. She grabs the hair at the nape of his neck, dragging him even closer, as his tongue strokes her lip, and then enters her. She grips his chin, exploring him, too. 

The world falls away.

Like last time.

But this time, she lets it stay fallen. 

For a minute, or an hour. Until he's out of breath, and so is she. Marks from her nails form crescents in his skin, and she's dizzy and hot in a pleasantly tipsy way, her skin humming and stippled with blush. 

"I've wanted to do this for millennia," he murmurs against her lips.

She smiles. "I guess you really are feeling better."

His beautiful laugh makes her insides tighten with need. He hooks his fingers at the edge of her towel. 

"May I?" he asks again, the words a bit huskier. "Please?"

The point of no return. No way this doesn't end in sex if she says yes. There aren't any forces left to pull them apart—not the mad marionette strings of the compulsion, not doubt of his commitment or respect, not self-preservation—she's already tied to the chopping block for heartbreak—not even, temporarily, the inexorable tide of Hell and the responsibilities that come with it. Not until he's fully recovered. In this small bubble of time, he's hers alone.

A gift of minutes. Hours. Days. No more. 

But still a gift.

Nodding, she sits up, and he drags away her towel. It lands on the floor beside the bed with a damp-sounding slap against the laminate. Her last little shield, gone. Cool ocean air brushes her nipples. She resists the urge to cross her arms, instead letting her hands rest by her sides, her fingers relaxed.

"No decorative hearts for me," she says.

His gaze drops below her navel, as if to confirm. She's trimmed, yes, but—

"Beautiful," he murmurs.

"You, too. Everything."

He stares at her. She stares at him. Both glutting on feasts for the eyes. 

He cups the backs of her knees. The sudden touch makes her leg twitch. Her body shiver. And then he pulls her across the sheet, laying her flat, kissing her lips again, her cleavage, trailing to her navel, and below. He spreads her legs, his palms splayed against her inner thighs.

"May I worship you?" he asks, the words a decadent mix of smut and softness, an echo of last Friday, as he strokes her leg. He rests his chin against her belly, his stubble-covered throat cupping her pubic bone. The heady expression in his eyes makes him seem like he's the moon to her sun, happy to revolve around her into infinity. "Please?"

No. Forces. Left.

"Yes," she says. "Please, I want you." Forever.

"Excellent choice." 

His face dips out of view, and when he kisses her—chastely save for the location at first—she gasps. More than a year has passed since she'd felt anything but her fingers or her vibrator touching down there. When he licks her, tastes her, she trembles with frissons of arousal. 

"Do you like this?" he says, sucking, and her whole body jerks, short-circuiting with white-hot noise.

"Too much; too much," she gasps, shuddering, and he eases off without complaint. 

"This?" He drags his tongue across her clit in slow, sensuous strokes. 

"Oh," is all she can say, a brief, barked syllable. "Oh, yes."

"Perfect."

He licks her again, again, again, his rhythm altering and twisting like a feather caught on the breeze. Her fingers pull into fists by her hips. She pants, a slick of sweat forming at the small of her back between skin and sheets. And then her fingers clenching nothing isn't enough, but she can't reach him—she arches backward, grabbing fistfuls of her pillowcase, the blankets, anything, as she stares at the headboard behind her. Tension fills her lower body to the brim, and she can't breathe. She can't _breathe_ as he pulls her up an incline of increasing dissonance, pleasure fighting with desire, unfulfilled need, and needs met just enough. 

He's skilled, and he's not trying at all to edge her. In minutes, she's breathlessly begging him, "There. There. Oh, _there_. Right there. _More_." More. More. She wants _more_. Until he detonates her. 

The shockwave rolls out from her core, vibrating to the tips of her toes and fingers, filling her vision with a buzzy black haze. Her muscles clench and release in unison, her whole body swept away at first, and then the contractions quiet to just her pelvic floor and lower abdomen. 

"Oh, my Go-uhhh," she gushes, barely correcting herself in time to, "ood Devil." 

He laughs. "An apt save." He blows softly on her wet skin, the cool air making her shiver. 

"Sorry, I think you made me blow a fuse. Wow." Good, _good_ Devil.

"Well, I did blow _something_ ," her good Devil snarks, his voice dark and deep. She cackles as he gives her a final kiss between her thighs. "You taste divine."

Her head is spinning as he drags himself away, resettling his long, lithe body beside her, skin to skin. He's beautiful in the lamplight, his erection heavy between them, ignored. Desire for him hums in her belly, sings in her blood, deep pangs that haven't assuaged themselves despite her explosive pleasure. She curls onto her side, facing him, propping an ear against her palm, cupping him with the other. His eyelids dip, and his hips move, pushing him against her a little, closing the gap. 

"I want more," she confesses as she strokes him with her thumb. "I want _you_. I need you close to me." Now. After too long. 

He licks his lip like he's remembering the taste of her. "This isn't close?"

"It is, but I wanna be _closer_. The closest. Please." She needs that intimacy like fire needs air. She _burns,_ hungry for it.

When he doesn't reply right away, only stares, his lips parted like she's stupefied him, she curses inwardly at her sudden impulse control issues. "Sorry, I know you're tired. We can wait." _Can_ they wait? 

"I'm not too tired for _you_ ," he says. "Coupling exerts little energy when done gently. I was only marveling."

"Marveling?"

He snickers. "You used to call me repulsive on a chemical level."

And … now they're naked in her bed, and her hand is wrapped lovingly around his penis. Rolling her eyes, she presses her forehead to his. "That me didn't know you."

"And, now?"

"This me loves you. This me knows you have to go soon."

He mashes his nose against hers, kissing her. "I'm glad you've opted for spontaneity just this once." Another kiss, the desperate press of his lips speaking volumes for him.

"Love me now?" she asks. 

"How would you like me?"

"I want to see you."

"Shall I do the driving, or will you ride me?" A fresh spark of yearning ignites between her legs. "Own me? Take—mmph." His words cut off as she silences him with a kiss. She grips his hip with her knee, and then they roll, until he's lying on his back looking up at her like she hung his stars for him, and she's straddling him, staring down. 

"Ride you," she says. "Own you. Take you. Definitely." 

He laughs. "Trying to keep me from collapsing in exhaustion on you, eh?"

She strokes the ripples of his ribs, up to his pecs. "Guilty as charged." 

"There are far worse ways to die than _la petite mort,_ you know. I've no qualms with doing a _bit_ of work just now. _"_

"Oh, God, that's _weird_."

"What's weird?"

"Hearing you speak French."

"It's a common loanword."

"But you used an accent. Totally extra."

"And that's more bizarre than a British Devil?"

She cocks her head. "You're right. That is bizarre. Did they copy you, or did you copy them?"

He chuckles. "Neither, really. We arrived where we are independently. I sounded what you now call 'British' long before Britain even—what?"

"Nothing," she whispers, chest aching. "Just looking at you. I could look at you forever."

His voice is husky when he asks, "Like what you see?" 

She nods.

"Well, then," he says, settling back against her pillow with a contented grin. "Your show, darling."

"Yes. Mine."

She rises onto her knees, reaching for his erection. He sucks in a sharp breath as she wraps her fingers around his girth, aiming him, and then sinks down. The broad tip of him massages the ring of nerve endings between her legs. A shaky groan rakes his vocal cords. She gasps as he slides in, the perfect fill-in for her aching void. Then they're joined—one body, connected. 

"How's that feel?" she asks him.

"Brilliant," he replies, slightly breathless.

She flexes her thighs, gathering herself. "How long have you dreamed of this?"

"Feels like … forev—ohh." He trails into a sigh as she rocks and grinds against his groin, relishing the hot, slick feel of him moving within her. The Devil. Her morning star. Her angel.

Hers.

"I love you," she repeats.

"And I you," he answers.

She drops her torso, pressing skin to skin, connecting them from hips to chest. The closest. Her desire. He strokes her spine, cups her ass, squeezes, helping her grind on him, harder, harder. She's going to make this so good for them. She kisses him, drinking down his taste, his scent, his feel, his _heat_. All of them are hers. Hers, and no one else's.

"Fuck me," he begs against her ear. "Please."

And she does.

* * *

He _is_ tired. So is she. They couple twice, the first time with her riding him. The second, they form a cross, their bodies perpendicular; him on his side, her on her back, her legs forming a steeple over his hips, and he thrusts gently into her as they talk and touch, as they love.

But all things end. Especially blissful ones.

* * *

When she wakes on Saturday morning to an empty bed, only the faint sandalwood scent of him lingering on her pillow, she knows his convalescence is over. Their time is over. A pit forms in her stomach. For too long, she doesn't rise. Instead, she listens to the birds, and the traffic on the street beyond her window, and someone's distant leaf blower, her fingers clenched against her sheets. 

The scent of fresh coffee teases her nose. 

Something sizzles on the griddle.

A shaft of sunlight creeps across the bed, until it's poking her in the face, refusing to leave her in peace. Dread coagulates like cold tar. With a sniff, she crawls out of bed. Takes a prolonged hot shower that only ends because the water heater gives out. Then she bundles up in her bathrobe, and spends too long staring blankly into the medicine-cabinet mirror as condensation drips down the glass.

But she can't hold back the tide forever. 

"There's bacon and coffee in the kitchen," he calls when she thumps grudgingly down the steps at 9:02, but her stomach is churning too hard for her to bother with either.

He's sitting on the couch in a pristine black suit, sipping coffee from her "No. 1 Mom" mug, as she drops onto the seat beside him.

He smiles. "You slept quite a while. Feeling better?"

"You're ready to go, aren't you," she says, staring into the dark abyss of the television screen. "All hale and hearty now, yeah?"

He sets his coffee mug on a coaster, turning to face her with an apologetic look. "Only for reconnaissance; I assure you. I'll be back before you blink, and then we'll chat."

"You'll be careful."

"Of course."

"Lucifer," she grits out, grabbing his arm and clenching hard, not caring if she hurts him. "You'll be _careful_."

His expression darkens. "I've no desire to be re-compelled. Never again."

"No. No, I know. So, you're just gonna—"

"Go there," he says. "Gauge the situation faster than demons can perceive. Return to you. Discuss."

"So, Lilith …?"

"Won't have any hope of knowing I'm there," he says gently. 

"But Amenadiel? Azrael? Who are potentially compelled?"

He sighs. "Obviously, my plan isn't foolproof, but I promise you, darling. I've no intention of approaching this with anything but an overabundance of caution." A pause, and then his tone shifts rapidly from confidence to quiet desperation as he continues, "See you an alternative? Something I've … not considered?" _Anything?_ he doesn't say, though it's written on his face.

He'll take _anything_ that doesn't involve him leaving her.

Her chest tightens. With Hell enduring a (potential) hostile takeover, Heaven incommunicado, ghosts piling up on Earth, and humans (reality?) in resulting mortal peril … "No," she admits, sinking. "If this were a perp"—something she could _dropkick_ —"maybe, but …." She’s out of her league.

He deflates, nodding with more than a little reluctance.

"Okay." She takes a breath, steeling herself. "Okay, I—"

The doorbell interrupts her. She frowns at him.

He shrugs. "Don't look at me. I didn't invite anyone."

She pads to the entryway, squinting through the peephole. Ella, Dan, Maze, Linda, and Trixie form a tight clot on her doormat. What in the world? She slides the chain off the hook and unfastens the deadbolt, yanking open the door.

"What are you guys doing here?" she asks.

"Hi!" Ella—at the front of the bunch—chirps. She holds out a large pink box. "Hi, I finally—"

"Lucifer!" cries Trixie, bursting from the pack to collide with Lucifer in the hallway as he approaches. She wraps her arms around Lucifer's waist and mashes her face against his suit jacket. 

"—brought donuts," Ella finishes.

"Hello, child," Lucifer says gravely, giving her an awkward pat on the head as Chloe takes the box from Ella.

"Thanks," Chloe says as everybody files into the foyer. "What's this for?"

"An apocalypse pow wow!" Ella says. "Or—"

Trixie holds up an envelope. "This is for you."

Lucifer regards the small blue sleeve with an intense frown. He slips his finger into a gap near the crease, breaking open the adhesive, pulling out—

"A card," he observes, fanning it to find a drawing of the whole group. Lucifer—no horns, no tail—stands regally in the back row with his wings spread edge to edge, Trixie perched on his shoulder, Ella, Dan, Linda, Chloe, and Maze huddled in front. GET WELL SOON!!!, the picture pronounces in blue-glitter capital letters. He cocks his head. "How … thoughtful?"

"—a 'get well soon, buddy' bash?" Ella ends her sentence.

"I drew the card," explains Trixie. "And we all signed it with hugs and kisses except for Dad."

Dan clears his throat. "I just used ink."

"Shame," observes Lucifer in a wry tone, staring at the card like he's never seen anything like it. Maybe he hasn't. "This is"—he looks up—"why?"

"Chloe told me you were sick," Ella explains.

"Well, not any longer," he says. "I was just about to leave, actually."

"So the SNAFU is fixed?" says Ella.

"When is it ever?" grumbles Maze.

Lucifer's gaze shifts from Trixie to Ella, Dan, Maze, and Linda. "I … feel as though I may have missed some context."

Dan sighs. "Man, you're not the only one."

"Guys," Chloe says, "it's really nice of you to come, but—"

"You're leaving?" demands Trixie, squinting suspiciously. " _Again?_ "

"Yes, the situation dictates I must reconnoiter," Lucifer says.

"What situation?" Trixie makes a face. "What's reconnoiter?"

"Scout, child," he amends, inclining his head at her. "I need to scout."

"Scout what?" 

"Hell, of course."

"But—"

"Hey, Trix," Chloe says, pushing past the crowd to gently grip Trixie's shoulders, "why don't you go play in your room for a bit? Put your headphones on."

"Aww, but I wanna hear the grownup stuff, too! I'm almost a grownup!"

"Trix—"

"Please?" she whines. " _Please_?"

Sighing, Lucifer regards her with a stern expression. "Child, it would greatly help your mother if you're calm and collected to keep her company after I've departed." 

"Why …?"

"Because sometimes," he says, "plans don't come to fruition"—Chloe clutches the donut box hard enough to make the cardboard groan in protest, though it doesn't yet crumple—"no matter how much we desire them to. Now, will you play in your room with your headphones donned, in exchange for a later favor?"

"What?" snaps Dan. He shakes his head vehemently. "No. No way. Not _my_ kid."

"I promise nothing untoward, Daniel. You've my word."

Dan folds his arms. "Dude, I'm not letting you take my daughter to Hell for—"

"Daniel, Daniel." Lucifer makes an exhausted tsk, tsk, tsk sound. "Bloody hell, we really must have a sit down, you and I." He rolls his eyes. "My favors come with no supernatural strings attached, of the selling souls variety or otherwise."

Dan's gaze shifts to Chloe, his eyes beseeching.

"He's telling the truth, Dan," Chloe offers.

"Have we a deal, child?" prods Lucifer.

Trixie sighs, slouching. "Fine." 

She trudges down the hall like Eeyore, yanking the door to her room shut with a resounding slam that makes the walls shake. They give her a moment to find her headphones before spilling into the living room and resuming in harsh, hushed whispers.

"So … what exactly are you reconnoitering?" Ella asks.

"The situation in Hell," Lucifer says. "I said that."

"For the ghosts? You're definitely not trapped anymore?"

"Yes. No." His eyebrows knit. "Yes for the ghosts. No, I'm not trapped."

"Now?" asks Linda. "You're going now?"

"I see little benefit in waiting. Perhaps even harm."

"Take me," says Maze, folding her arms. "I'll eviscerate anyone who tries to—"

"I would, Mazikeen, but I'm not intending to land. For now, my goal is speed—you'd only slow me down."

"In Hell," says Ella as Maze huffs, folding her arms. "She'd only slow you down while you're looking _in Hell_."

"Is this … not what I just said?" asks Lucifer.

"Jesus," says Dan, collapsing like a knocked over bowling pin onto the couch Chloe and Lucifer had vacated only minutes before.

"Whoa," says Ella, her eyes wide. "I mean … whoa."

"Yeah, you never get used to the celestial planning sessions," says Linda. "I've had years, and they still blow my fucking mind."

"Doctor _Linda_ ," Lucifer purrs, sounding impressed. "The mouth on you."

"What? Cursing is scientifically proven to release stress," she retorts. "Chloe, do you have any gin?"

"Speaking of stress," Maze snarks.

"Scotch," Lucifer says, pointing toward the kitchen. "In the cabinet on the right. Glenfiddich. The Detective purchased it for me. It's quite good." 

"Great," says Linda, her heels clacking on the broken tiles as she follows his direction. Zeroing in on the correct cabinet, she grabs the bottle, skips the glass, pops the cork, and chugs in the stretching silence.

Lucifer shifts on his feet. "I should go-O—" 

"Bon voyage, buddy," Ella says, hugging him fiercely without warning. He sucks in a breath, his lips pulling back like he's fighting a snarl. "I believe in you. You're the best Devil ever."

"I'm only _scouting_ ," he insists. "I'll literally return immediately."

"You really think you can fix the ghosts?" Dan asks.

"Well, I won't _know_ that until I've bloody scouted _,_ " Lucifer retorts petulantly. He pushes Ella away, dancing awkwardly back a step. "Bloody hell, woman, must you? _"_

"Sorry," Ella says. "Sorry, I know you don't like hugs; I just couldn't—I don't know what else to _do._ "

"No, I'm …." He takes a breath, holding it like he's counting in his head. Then he lets it out, and speaks in a calmer yet still tense tone, "I don't like people to touch me by surprise. More so now than before. You surprised me."

"Oh." She blinks. "I'm sorry."

"It's quite all right." Another breath. In and out. 

"Wait, does this mean I can hug you if I ask first?"

"If you must," he says begrudgingly. "Don't expect me to participate."

"Sweet. Noted."

He swallows, looking at all of them. "It means—" He interrupts himself, his eyes a little misty. "Well, it means quite a lot to see you before I leave." He smirks. "Except for Daniel, perhaps."

Dan snorts. "Believe me; feeling's mutual."

Chloe wonders if Lucifer's had even an inkling of this before. Friends. Loved ones. People willing to see him off. Setting the donut box on the coffee table, she closes the gap between her and him. She doesn't constrict him with a hug—not now, after he's been semi-triggered. Instead, she grabs his hand, tangling her fingers in his. 

"Now?" she says softly.

"I think it's best, yes?" Lucifer replies. "Rip the Band-Aid, as you're fond of saying?"

"Please, be careful," she implores him. " _Please_."

He squeezes her palm. "I promise, darling; back in a jiff."

"Before I blink, you said. I'm holding you to that."

"Of course." He regards the cluster of his loved ones. "You'll stay with her until I return?"

"I don't think any of us can leave before she blinks unless she's reaaaally trying not—" Ella stops talking when Linda, still sipping from the scotch bottle, elbows her in the ribs. "I mean, yeah, totes. Not moving a _muscle_."

Lucifer steps back from Chloe, from all of them, his wings unfolding from nothing. They gleam and glow like summer warmth and laughter. The sight, lingering, lovely, knocks away Chloe's dread, leaving only determination. Hope. 

"Go," she urges him quietly. "It's okay. I love you. Go."

His gaze softens as he peers at her, his eyes tracing her like he's memorizing every line, fleck, and freckle. A car backfires, somewhere beyond the living room window. Her attention wavers. Just for a heartbeat. For a _moment_. There's a gust of cool air against her skin. When she looks back, he's gone.

"Holy fuck," Dan says. "Holy _fuck_."

"Kinda accurate, really," chirps Ella. "He is holy. And he does enjoy going to pound town. And—crud, you blinked already." 

Chloe blinks, and blinks again, her eyes prickling fiercely as the world blurs behind a wall of burning water. But … he'd used a metaphor. Nothing more. Shaking, she sags against the kitchen divider. Ella and Dan converge on her like hummingbirds racing to a flower, and sandwich her in warmth.

 _I'll literally return immediately,_ he'd said.

Literally.

But.

"He … meant it as a metaphor," Chloe says as Linda joins the hug, followed by a reluctant Maze. "He meant it as a metaphor, right? Back before you blink?"

"Yeah," says Maze. "I'm sure that's what he meant." 


	45. "a messy gut wound"

For an angel, passing through dimensions is a bit like slicing bread. A thin wall of resistance—the crust—the edges of reality and form—protects a softer, moister, more vulnerable center—reality itself. But an angel is a blade, and even bread crusts separate easily to a keen edge.

Lucifer leaves the Detective's dimension, parting reality. When he hits the outer edge—the bread crust—he pushes a little harder to—

His guts slam into his ribcage as he Falls.

He yells, scrabbling, scrambling, panicked. His wings flare wide, flapping to stay his descent. The downward, lurching pull of nothingness ceases, but for an awful moment, he isn't Now; he's Then. The moment Dad had thrown him away. His wings hadn't worked—Michael had broken them in five places, dislocating one. Then the literal Wrath of God had crashed into him—crushed him, incinerated him—like a meteor, sending him down, and down, and Down. Into Perdition.

This is not Perdition. 

His heart slams in his ears. His limbs are shaking. Nausea swirls in his stomach, his gorge rising. But there is no Wrath of God, and no Michael to execute it. He isn't Falling again. He _isn't_. He is not.

He takes Linda's advice, inhaling over the count of three, but nothing fills his lungs.

There is Nothing to inhale.

He can still mime the motions, though. In, and out.

He is not _Falling_. He is _not_ Falling. 

His wits return, a trickle at first, and then a flood. 

He flies back the way he'd come, grasping for the bread crust he'd just cut through. The rough edge brushes his fingertip. Another beat of his wings, and he's close enough to grab a fistful. 

He digs in. 

Tears through.

Spills onto the beach he'd departed.

Clouds roil overhead, laden with impending rain. The crash of unfurling waves fills his ears. Gulls cackle above, wrestling with updrafts. The scent of salt blankets his nose. 

"What," he says to no one, panting as the breeze buffets him, "the bloody. _Fuck_."

* * *

Prepared, he tries again. And again. Same thing. Where the crusts of two realities—the Detective's Earth and Hell—should lie flush, the crust of this reality ends, and nothing meets it.

Nothing.

He zips up the beach, to another junction for another Earth. He rams into the doorway, sawing through soft reality until he's spilled onto an icy sheet as wide as the planet's curve. 

Two realities, touching at a joint. As they should be. 

Biting wind whips his face. Black clouds swirl violently above. Rather apocalyptic. But he's never been to this Earth before. Has no idea if this is an end, or an always. He won't judge. He's only interested in this place's connection to Hell, which should be nearby, given how the bits and pieces of Creation tend to fit together. 

He peers between each atom, into a microcosmic kaleidoscope of light—the incandescent filaments buttressing reality. Ah. There. He slides across the ice to the gate, reorienting, and then flies, faster than sound. 

Through the crust, he plunges into Nothing.

And when he tries again? Nothing, again. 

He soars to the opposite hemisphere of the ice Earth, punches through three more Earths in that direction, and searches for Hell's entryway there. He finds it on the roof of a bank in Thailand. Or … what looks like Thailand anyway, from the flag, people, and language. My, how things would have changed if he'd emigrated to this Earth instead.

But when he slams into the gate, _again,_ he's met with Nothing.

He tries more entries on more Earths. 

Nothing, Nothing, Nothing.

He widens his search, leaping into several universes attached via Jupiter. Hell is not accessible there either. Faster and faster, he lunges. To universes attached via stars so distant no human would have names for them. Still, no Hell. 

Dad has an addiction to what ifs. 

Lucifer tries universes without an Earth, thanks to various cataclysms or false starts. Universes with several Earths. He tries universes so experimental in design, so strange and counterintuitive, no words could describe them except: Dad got piss drunk and doodled in his notebook with six-dimensional ink. Yet, still, in every wild place Lucifer wends, the gates to Hell lead nowhere. 

Again, again, again. 

Where Hell should be, it never is.

He cannot find it.

He searches farther, wider, faster.

But he cannot find Hell at all.

* * *

He gives up diagnosing the problem from its epicenter. Instead, he bursts into the palette of Creation itself: the endless space Dad uses for his projects. The "garage." Three dimensions are inadequate for describing the brilliant canvas, but in limited layman's terms, the multiverse clots together as an atom's nucleus would. The Detective's universe—which had finally pleased Dad enough to say it was very good—bubbles and pulsates nearest the edge. 

In the distance, far beyond the multiverse, like a nighttime skyline reflected in a dark, frothy bay, resides the Silver City. Heaven. Something sears Lucifer's heart at the sight of it: the spires reaching skyward over the glowing Wall and Gates. This is the closest Lucifer's been since his Fall. He's never left the innards of Creation since Dad smote him into the hot Hell center of the storm. But he has no time for useless emotions. The Detective will blink any moment. He turns his attention to—

"What are _you_ doing here?" snaps a familiar voice. "You're not allowed here."

Bristling, Lucifer pastes a smirk onto his face. Raguel hovers four car lengths away. His wings, a deep russet like a Harris hawk, are fanned aggressively, their color matching his shock of waist-length hair. His svelte frame swims in his silly white robes, the ensemble made worse by the heavenly version of Birkenstocks. 

"Raggy, Raggy, Raggy," Lucifer says, taunting, "you of all angels know I was ousted from the City, not Creation, so, if you'll excuse me, I need to—"

"No."

Indignation boils in Lucifer's gut. "What the bloody hell do you mean, no?" Raguel had been the one to prosecute him in a frothing, rage-filled kangaroo court. Divine Justice at its worst. "Surely, you're aware of my sentence."

Raguel huffs. "Samael, we have enough trouble without you stirring up yet more." He gestures to the multiverse. "Be gone whence you came, and I'll not pester you further."

"What kind of trouble?" Lucifer asks.

"That isn't your business anymore, is it?"

"Bloody hell, what _kind_ of trouble, Raguel?"

Raguel doesn't blink, his sharp eyes colored like honey but somehow radiating cold like glaciers. Lucifer glares back at him. Their great wings beat in the silence, in the freezing vacuum. Raguel blinks first. Looks away. 

"We tried calling you," Raguel says, wounded, angry. "We tried calling you a thousand times, and you _ignored_ us."

Lucifer frowns. "What do you mean, you tried calling me?"

"We prayed to you."

"When?"

"Every time you've _asked us,_ Samael!Time and time again. Why do you taunt us so if you have no intention to assist?" Raguel makes a face. "Or, perhaps, I've answered my own question. Begone!"

"What are you bloody _talking_ about?" Lucifer says. "Of course I intend to help, or I wouldn't bloody _be_ here. Stop speaking in riddles!"

Raguel darkens, forming air quotes with his fingers. "'I know I've not precisely been a team player in the past, but I'm here now.' Is this not what you said? And, yet, when we capsized our dignity to extend you an olive branch, when we _begged_ you—you, the Lightbringer to pierce the dark—you never answered. And you never came."

Lucifer's stomach drops like a stone. Oh, no _._ No, no, no. The Detective had permitted him to pray to anyone he desired. She had _not,_ however, permitted him to listen. Had his siblings become distant buzzing bees in his head like the rest of humanity?

"Raguel, I was compelled," Lucifer rushes to explain. "Lilith. She did something to me. Carved me out and stole my will. Clearly, she curtailed my ability to—"

"Always excuses with you. Always reasons you are not to blame."

"I am _not_ to blame!" explodes Lucifer, and the blackness of Creation's palette streaks red like blood. "I was trapped. Against my will. For millennia." He advances on Raguel, who backs away until Lucifer snatches a fistful of his robe, halting his egress with an iron arm. 

Raguel gasps in alarm, squirming, squawking. 

"I was _enslaved_ ," Lucifer continues, a sibilant almost-hiss. "I was tortured, and used, and shamed, and humiliated. Over, and over, and over again. I've only just escaped." His rage a tsunami, he shakes Raguel. "If you wanted my bloody help, where the bloody hell were _you_ when _I_ needed you? All of you!"

He's trembling. Dizzy. His wings feel like jelly, ready to dribble into a puddle. A reddish wall of feathers slams into him, driving him back, spinning him in space before he catches himself. A lucky blow.

"Stop," Lucifer rasps, eyes wet. "Stop it."

" _You,_ stop! You're _lying_ , like you always do." Raguel's words are a lambasting growl. "You haven't been enslaved. You've been shacking with your little human again."

"Yes, _after!_ And I was still _trapped!_ I couldn't. Bloody. _Hear_ you!"

"Then why pray to us at all?"

"Because," Lucifer seethes slowly, "I'd no idea I was celestially deafened!"

"Right."

This is going nowhere. Lucifer takes a breath, trying to stuff himself back into some semblance of calm, but his throat feels like it choked on a scimitar. The strip of austere, white light searing the background like the edge of a molten blade—Heaven—makes him ache with nostalgia and other awful things. And Raguel's hatred makes him _burn_.

 _Amenadiel,_ Lucifer pleads in silence. _Azrael. Please, please, respond. I wasn't able to hear you before, but I'm here now. I can help now. Please, brother. Sister. I desire to help._

"They won't answer," snaps Raguel. "Like you, they've answered no one."

"Know you where they are?" Lucifer asks. "If you can at least disclose that, I'll leave. You've my word." For now. Until he can regroup. And calm down. And _think_. Perhaps the Detective will have suggestions.

But Raguel folds his arms, obstinate. 

" _Please_ ," Lucifer grits out, a flat, cold snarl of a word, despite the humiliation it brings. Despite the spill of heat across his face. He is sick of begging. "Please, brother."

"They're gone."

"Gone where?"

"We have our suspicions."

"Which are?"

"I've answered you," says Raguel. "You said you would leave."

"If you told me where they are!" protests Lucifer. "'Gone' is not a bloody place, you pillock."

Raguel's lips form an unamused line. "Lying with the truth again, I see. How predictable."

"No, _no_ , I was not ly—"

"What's going on over here?" booms a familiar voice behind him. "… Sa-uhh … Lucifer?"

No. No. _No._

This is going off the rails.

He's boxed in. 

"Holy shit, you came!" adds the interloper.

And then, in Lucifer's head, he's Falling again. Down, and down. Memories. Triggers. He bites his tongue bloody to keep from yelping in alarm, from fleeing. A coppery taste explodes in his mouth, but he swallows it back. Again. Again. He latches onto the fact that he feels no plunging sensation in his gut.

"Gabby," Lucifer says warily over his shoulder, not tearing his eyes from Raguel. He licks his bloody lip. "Hello."

"Dude, you came! Look at that, Rags, he came after all!"

"So I see," Raguel says unhappily.

But Gabriel sounds … almost excited. Hope sparks like a live wire dragged across wet ground. Lucifer turns halfway, monitoring both aggressors. 

Gabriel is not a fighter, not like Amenadiel, or Remiel, or Michael. Not even a half-practiced one like Lucifer. He's shorter than Raguel, but more muscular. His black hair is closely cropped, and his eyes are blue like ocean. He's ditched the whole heavenly robe ensemble for stonewashed jeans and a black button-down shirt. 

"Man, you look"—Gabriel tilts his head—"terrified." 

"I'm _fine_ ," Lucifer says primly, stiffening. He brushes his lip with his thumb. A splotch of red stains the pad of his finger. "No bloody thanks to you lot."

"Something happened? Other than … you know."

"Oh, you mean other than Dad throwing me out like trash and you lot doing _nothing_ to defend me?'"

"Well, yeah. We all know _that_ happened." 

With a sniff, Lucifer brushes his sleeves, inspecting his cufflinks. "Yes, I … was detained."

"Bummer." Gabriel brightens like a springtime superbloom. "But you can help now, right?" 

"With," Lucifer replies through his teeth, "what?" He jabs a thumb at Raguel. "This one refuses to explain."

"Dude." Gabriel glares over Lucifer's shoulder. "Don't be a fucking prick. Dad doesn't need this right now."

"But he made us _beg!_ " Raguel says.

"Yes, quite a lot of that going around," Lucifer snarks, exasperated. "Now, will _someone,_ please, explain what's happening? Where are Amenadiel and Azrael? Why are souls piling up like plastic bottles in the bloody bin? Why can I not find a functional door to Hell? I cannot rule it if I cannot find it."

"Oh, boy," says Gabriel woefully, shaking his head, "you really are out of the loop, aren'tcha?"

* * *

Hell is gone.

Hell is _gone._

The connection points between universes aren't malfunctioning. They all work perfectly fine. The problem is Hell. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Because it's bloody _gone_. Worse, where it used to be isn't some blank black canvas again, isn't simply a discarded draft returned to clean slate for Dad to continue toiling and tinkering, but a jagged rip from end to end, exposing Void. 

Void. 

The place that had been Before.

Before God. Before the Big Bang and Creation. Before _anything_.

The angels—all of them—hover outside the rip, a bright glittering wall of ruffled feathers as they cry and pace and wail and worry. As Lucifer watches, Remiel tries to breach the Void. She sticks in her hand, all the way to her elbow. Despite a grimace followed by chattering teeth, she pushes forward, the bubble of darkness enveloping her body and her falcon-like wings. She's gone less than a moment before she claws back out, shrieking, gasping, shivering, her skin suddenly sallow, her plumage molting. 

"It's too dark!" she sobs as angels—so many Lucifer has never met—converge to carry her away. "It's too dark! I cannot!"

Remiel. Sobbing.

"How could this happen?" Lucifer asks quietly. Lilith couldn't possibly have done this. Only Mum and Dad possess the power to shape Void, and Mum is gone. "How …?" 

"No clue," says Gabriel. 

"Well, why hasn't Dad bloody fixed it!" 

Gabriel looks away. "He's … got other stuff on his mind right now."

"What could be more important than _this_?" 

"Who are you to judge?" snaps Raguel. "You who have shirked your every duty and responsibility!"

"Dude, shut _up,_ " Gabriel scolds. " _Stop making it worse."_

Hot slivers of rage bisect Lucifer's heart, but he fights back a frothing snarl. "Is this where you believe Amenadiel and Azrael have gone?"

"Yeah," says Gabriel. "We thought the worst for you, too, but then you prayed." He sighs, pulling his fingers through his dark hair—a familiar gesture. "Lucifer, what happened before it blew?"

"I've … no idea." Had Lilith perished in the destruction, or …?

"How can you not know?" demands Raguel. "This was _your_ domain. Dad gave it to _you._ "

"Because I don't bloody remember," Lucifer grits out.

"I thought your memory was eidetic," says Gabriel, flummoxed. 

"Yes, well, I've a millennia-wide hole in my head that missed the bloody memo"—Lucifer glowers at Raguel—"and pardon me, but I'd prefer you not classify Hell like it's a bloody _gift_ Dad sent me for Christmas."

"You defied him at every turn, in every way," Raguel says, "and he gave you a kingdom to rule in exchange. How is that not a _gift_?"

"Because I didn't bloody want it!" retorts Lucifer, just as Gabriel adds, " _Dude_! Shut it!"

Raguel scoffs. "Well, it would seem you have your wish now, _brother_. Congratulations." 

An impasse. Again.

"Can we not," Lucifer asks, gesturing uselessly, "dump the Hell-bound souls elsewhere until Dad has time to correct this?" 

"I … don't think he's gonna have time, Sam," says Gabriel in a weird tone, only to blink. Shake himself. "Lucifer. I meant Lucifer."

Ignoring him, Lucifer nods to the Void. "Why not toss them there, for now, or …?"

"We cannot _go_ into Void," Raguel protests snippily. "Did you not see? We try, and try, but the darkness saps us. Disorients us!"

"Then pick somewhere else! Somewhere they can be evenly spaced until this is bloody fixed." Torture for the damned, yes, but at least reality won't be in imminent danger. "I just saw an empty ice Earth that—" 

"We have been _trying_ ," Raguel insists. "Do you think us bereft of our mental faculties?"

"Apparently," Lucifer replies, "since you've left behind countless oopses for me to deal with." 

"Because Azrael is gone! _She's_ the one who brings morality straddlers to me for judgment. No one else!"

"And no one can _cover her bloody shift_?"

"There aren't enough of us with the proper skills to—"

"Bloody hell, do you lot not bloody care that—"

"Of course wecare!" Raguel cries, his eyes growing wet as grief supplants fury. "This is why we _begged_ you. We have _all._ Begged you! All of us, Samael! How _dare_ you, betrayer."

Gabriel claps his hands over his face. "Fuck, Rags, would you fucking _chill_? We're all fucking upset, man; you don't have the monopoly! Fuck!"

Silence falls like fresh snow as eyes that had been turned toward the Void turn to Lucifer instead. Thousands of judging gazes in the darkness. Most of them harsh and reproachful and angry. Others grieving glistening tears. Nobody moves. 

"Look," Gabriel continues, "Sam—"

"Do _not_ call me—"

"Lucifer," Gabriel rushes to correct himself. "I mean _Lucifer._ Please, will you help us get Menny and Rae-Rae back? Please?"

"What precisely do you expect me to do?" 

"You're the only one who can enter safely."

Lucifer folds his arms over his suit. "Enter the Void."

"Yes. Please, brother. We would have asked Mike, but—"

"He's gone." Too little, too late, but that's neither here nor there. "Yes, I know." 

Michael had been his twin, identical in every way. At Dad's instruction, Michael had honed his skills as a weapon, and Lucifer had honed his skills with light. Years of focus versus atrophy had made Michael a mediocre Lightbringer, and Lucifer a mediocre Sword of God. But, still, the skills had been shared. Once. Long ago.

Lucifer scoffs softly. They would rather have solicited the loyal amateur than the rebellious expert. Lucifer is their first choice only via technicality of availability.

He stares at the billowing wall of inky abyss. The edges crackle and flutter in the currents, oozing blackness into the emptiness surrounding. The whole thing looks like a gunshot wound, as if Creation's palette were a person, murdered and waiting for Lucifer and the Detective to solve the mystery. 

"I've," says Lucifer, "not brought light anywhere to this degree in eons." 

"But you could," says Gabriel. "I _know_ you could. Please. Please, at least, help us with _that_."

The doubt, the pleading, the unspoken expectation that Lucifer wouldn't assist with a single daddamned thing without duress …. 

How little they think of him. 

How little they _know_ , or ever tried to. He is nothing to them. Only a means to an end.

This … is not his family.

He's not certain they ever were. 

"You all," he says softly, staring into the distance, "threw me away, and never once thought of me again until it suited you. I have been _trapped_ , for millennia, and not one of you knew, or cared, as long as Hell was managed and not"—he gestures at the maelstrom—"not bleeding into Creation like a messy gut wound."

Gabriel tries to interrupt, "Lucifer—" 

"No!" Lucifer snaps. "No, I prayed to you for the first time since I Fell. I _pleaded_ with you— _clearly_ something was amiss—yet you chose to regard my failure to respond as _defiance_. How dare _you_!" 

Raguel rolls his eyes, saying nothing.

Gabriel stares at his feet. "You know time is different here, man."

"Now, who has _excuses_?" Lucifer retorts.

Nobody speaks.

Staring into the abyss, Lucifer clenches and unclenches his teeth until his jaw hurts. "Yes, I will help you. But not because you demand, or because I owe you—I do _not._ " Shocked gasps and whispering tumble through the crowd like acrobats. "No, I do it because I care for people who will be hurt by this if I do nothing, and unlike you _wankers_ , I learn, eventually." He _wants_ to be good. He wants it.

"Lucifer—"

"Go to Hell," Lucifer says. "All of you. It's what you deserve."

And then he flies headfirst into Void.

* * *

Black. Everywhere. Choking, umbral black so thick he couldn't cut it with Azrael's blade. Now that he knows what the darkness is—Void—he cannot comprehend how he mistook it for broken doors before. A strange, undulating echo—a wail, like phantoms caught on a carousel—whirls about his head. The air is gelid, sinking deep into his veins and bone marrow, making him shiver.

"Help!" a woman shrieks weakly in the distant din, sharper and more solid than other sounds. "Help! Please, help!" 

The syllables bounce and multiply, resounding, filling up the empty like a choir in a cathedral. Her direction is impossible to pinpoint.

"Azrael!" he calls into the blackness. "I've come for you! Don't move about!"

"Help!" she repeats, as if she hasn't heard him. "Please, help! I can't … please."

 _Azrael,_ he prays instead, hoping his thoughts can penetrate Void whilst he's inside. _I'm here. Don't fly about; it'll make you harder to find._

"Lu?" she yells. "Oh, my Dad, _Lu?"_

"Yes! I'm here!" 

"Lu! Lu! Lu!" Before she prays a soft, exhausted, _My wings are cold_. _I can't fly anymore_.

_I know, darling. I'm coming. Have you Amenadiel with you as well?_

_Um … yes, but—_

_Stay put! I'll have you out in a jiff._

Lucifer spreads his wings—about twenty-five feet in span, each feather a jagged holy blade. The darkness sucks the luminescence from his feathers so easily, Lucifer can't see them sprawling on either side of him. He closes his eyes. 

_Let there be light_ , Dad had said.

And there was light. Lucifer had answered with gusto, siphoning brilliance from himself—illumination no darkness could drown or douse—and birthing it unto the world. 

Now, he has no special sword to cry over, no new stars to set alight, nor can he build a beacon from nothing—that power is God's alone. 

But he has a heavenly body.

The Lightbringer's flesh, bone, and blood.

He centers himself. 

On his rage, his pain, his grief, his _truth_. 

They burn in his belly like coals bathed in lit lighter fluid. 

He thinks of Raguel's barely veiled accusations, of Gabriel's targeted indifference, of his army of siblings, staring at him and hating and judging. He thinks of Amenadiel before he'd taken a humble pill. Azrael before she'd deigned to visit after eons of ignoring him. He thinks of Dad. 

_Samael, you shame me,_ he'd said. _You shame all of us! Truly, you are my poison, aptly named._

He thinks of Lilith. Contrary, but kind. Until her punishment had twisted her beyond recognition. 

_Do you not wish for more, my new king?_ she'd said, when she'd been whole in mind, body, and spirit.

She hadn't gotten more. 

She'd rotted out her sanity in Hell, and then stole the same from him in reprisal.

 _Forget your power,_ she'd said.

His life has _never_ been his, and he has been discardedfor wanting otherwise. Punished for eternity. Like her. 

He funnels that emotion into one word.

One meaning.

One desire.

Light. 

A spark kindles one of the tiny hairs speckling his arm, and then another, and another. Flames lick his skin. He ignites, a bursting blaze, sending shafts of light in all directions, illuminating the abyss from edge to infinite edge. 

Damned souls and frozen demon bodies float at the Void's edges like moons for Jupiter. Millions, billions, trillions. The souls, each bright like nuclear explosions, absorb his radiance and reflect it back, fighting, lighting the dark. 

"Lu!" Azrael shrieks again. "I see you! I see you! I think I can—" 

He is burning. From the inside out. Flames funnel from him, rippling with heat, warping the space beyond his skin. He arches backward, speaking the Word for Light again, and again. Fire pours from his mouth, and his eyes, and his fingertips, lashing the dark like dragon's breath.

"Lu! Lu, I'm here! Over here! Please. Please, I can't fly!"

With a bright, burning exhalation, he pierces the Void. He is a Sword. And then he sags, panting, fading once again. The souls, all lit like candles, drift in their infinite orbits. 

He scans slowly clockwise.

"Here!" she yells. "Here!"

On the edge of infinity, he spots her. She's shaking. Pinwheeling. Her dingy patchwork wings are bare of feathers in too many places, the skin left behind frostbitten and decayed to the bone. Amenadiel floats at her side like driftwood barely clinging to the sand as the tide tries to suck it out to sea.

Reality stretches into white-hot-needle shapes as Lucifer zips toward his siblings, faster than sound, faster than light, faster than thought. She grabs his wrist with freezing fingers, desperation strengthening her grip. He cups his hand over hers. Amenadiel doesn't reach for him, though. Amenadiel doesn't move.

"What," is all Lucifer can say.

"Lu," she says, hiccuping, her voice a quiet rasp, her dark, bespectacled eyes wet with tears. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Amenadiel's empty, clouded stare speaks for him. A gaping hole in his chest exposes red innards and white spine, like someone had punched through his ribcage and stolen his heart. 

"What happened?" Lucifer asks.

"He was dead when I found him. He—"

"No."

"Lucifer, I'm sorry."

"No. _No_ , I will not have this." He plucks his largest feather, ignoring the lance of pain and the burning bloody trickle down his skin. He jams the feather underneath Amenadiel's ripped t-shirt, laying the rachis flush with his gaping sternum. His flesh is cold like an arctic zephyr. Nothing happens. "No, no"—Lucifer clenches his fingers so hard the feather's edges cut his own skin—"they're supposed to _heal_. They … they _heal_ angels! They've healed him before."

"Not from dead," Azrael warbles. "He's already gone. He's _been_ gone."

"You found him here? In the Void?"

She nods, tears freezing on her face. "I was trying to get out, b-but it was so dark. I thought he'd come to help me, and then I realized he was colder than m-me."

"Were you in Hell when this happened?"

"It disintegrated, Lu. Like a great big d-dandelion in the wind. It just … _poof_." She depicts twin explosions, splaying her formerly clenched fists. "Never seen anything like it."

Lucifer's chest tightens. He rubs the glowing feather against Amenadiel's skin, stuffs it into the gaping wound so hard the vane snaps. Nothing happens. Nothing.

"No," Lucifer says. "No, this isn't how it's supposed to happen. I'm supposed to save you, so you can see your noisy, smelly, jelly-covered genetic proliferation!"

"Lucifer—"

"No!" He snaps backward a step, withdrawing his hands from Amenadiel. The feather floats away, unused, gleaming wisps of divinity leaking from the broken vane. Lucifer trembles, his body a pent-up earthquake. A before-shock. "I am sick and bloody tired of being told how things will be and what I must do! I am sick of being punished. I am sick of being a _slave!_ "

"I didn't mean—"

"This. Will. Not. _Be."_

He chokes on a breath as his desire compresses like coals into diamonds, wrought by the unyielding, awful pressure in his chest. His eyes water and spill. Power shudders through him. Imperative. A burning, boiling, blistering inferno of desire. Like the compulsion, but worse: his power to make Light, amplified into something godlike and terrible. Familiar pain carves him out, and he yells until he shatters, his mind splitting open, the Void around him fading away, as his Will takes form. What he wants most in this moment, in this here and this now. 

Resurrection.

Amenadiel gasps, the mistiness in his eyes receding to reveal a warm brown. 

Lucifer flounders as the power leaves him. The Void and the glowing swirls of souls—the frozen bodies of dead demons circling the edges—all swim before his eyes. One big bright phantasmagoria. He hurts. He can't breathe right. Something inside him had torn. He's felt like this before—destroyed in the arduous process of Creation and Destruction. 

History echoes.

Memories pour into Lucifer, at first a drip, drip, drip, and then a deluge. 

"Lucifer?" his brother says weakly, alive, and far, far away. "Is that you this time?"

But "this time" evaporates, replaced by "that time." By before. In resurrection, recollection, and Lucifer sinks, his mind plummeting into the lurid lost pit where he keeps all things willfully forgotten. Down, and down, and down, he descends, into the worst moments of his life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!!! Chapter 46 is VERY dark and directly presents Lucifer’s time in Hell post-capture. Triggers include: torture, mind control, humiliation, nonconsensual touch (including groping), nonconsensual kissing, nonconsensual body modification (piercing, branding, implied feather plucking), forced arousal, forced orgasm. A summary of salient plot points will be provided at the beginning of chapter 47 (so you don’t need to scroll through 46). I encourage anyone who has reservations to skip. I will be posting 46 and 47 on the same day, so you’ll still have something to read.


	46. "for free will"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!!! Chapter 46 is VERY dark and directly presents Lucifer’s time in Hell post-capture. Triggers include: torture, mind control, humiliation, nonconsensual touch (including groping), nonconsensual kissing, nonconsensual body modification (piercing, branding, implied feather plucking), forced arousal, forced orgasm. A summary of salient plot points will be provided at the beginning of chapter 47 (no need to scroll through 46). I encourage anyone who has reservations to skip. I've also posted chapter 47, so you still have something to read.
> 
> With that said, here we go! *gulp*

He wakes to a puddle of drool and a room smote to ashes. An agonizing urge to grab his Skeleton Key from the Greater Throne—to set her free—fills him to the brim. Which … no. No, that's—he scrabbles at the burnt husk of his mattress, his body pushed into the razor sharp edge before release, and then sliced open, left to bleed. Desire so acute it's agony. He cannot talk except to scream. He cannot move except to writhe—to react to the crack of the whip—or serve. 

_Free me, Samael. Now._

Her prayer is a vise, squeezing his brain into jelly. Free her, Free Her, _Free Her, FREE HER_. The solution. The thing that will allow him completion. His only cogent thought. The idea makes him salivate. 

_Samael,_ she calls to him in a singsong tone.

"Please," he almost wheezes, unbidden. Finish it. Free her. " _Please_."

 _Free me now_ , _Samael._

His fingers clench. The bleeding becomes an arterial tear. 

His mind breaks.

He doesn't return to himself until he's sagging against the bars of his dungeon, aching, unsatisfied, bewildered. His mouth tastes coppery. The metal door squeals as she pushes it open. He's still trying to catch his breath as she steps over his slumped body, smiling garishly at him. 

His rage won't translate to willful movement. Or speech. Not even fire. He cannot call _fire_ —his element, _his_ —when he thinks of it. 

His heart pounds. What—

"Get up," she tells him.

An awful wave rolls over him again. He twists in place, crying out. His head cracks against the bars behind him as he whips backward, a tense, straining arch, trying to escape the inescapable. GET UP, GET UP, _GET UP_. The words burn his blood. His mind. He'll be rewarded if he gets up. He'll be complete. He'll finish. He'll—

 _No._

He fights and froths and gnashes his teeth.

She claps her hands like a child loosed on a candy store. "Oh, this is marvelous! Even better than I'd hoped!"

He won't get up, but he must. He _must_.

She stares without sympathy as she waits for him to succumb.

"Please," he croaks, helpless to stop himself, and she claps again. 

Bounces on her feet.

Still, he resists. 

He resists until he loses his mind.

Again, and again, and again.

* * *

Noncompliance is exhausting.

She keeps him in the throne room. 

Naked. 

His wings unfurled. 

His body on display for the cackling hordes he used to rule. 

She sits on his throne sideways, her legs kicked over one arm and crossed daintily at the ankles, as she strokes the feathers she stole from him. 

Whenever his eyelids dip, whenever his body succumbs to weariness, a compulsion to stand pours lava into every bone, muscle, sinew. He's forced to present himself like the prize pig at a fair, and the cycle repeats. 

The time he can stay vertical before stumbling decreases. The time he suffers before he can pick himself up increases. His muscles burn. His body trembles. His breaths become clipped, distressed gasps. 

When he thinks he cannot bear more, she splays him on the steps beneath the throne, turning him into gruesome theater. The crowd catcalls. The brand glows like holy fire, molten and looming. 

"You're mine," she taunts him before adding for the hooting rabble, "He is _mine_." 

She jams the hot end against his skin.

Time dilates. Everything flares white. 

The air reeks of burning flesh when he returns.

He's trembling, cold, woozy.

"Get up," she commands.

He displays himself to her.

"Show them who owns you!"

He turns to his tittering spectators. For the first time in his life, he is naked. They see the cauterized skin, still burning like a magma eddy by his navel. He doesn't know what the brand depicts—he cannot look—but from their leers and jeers, he can guess it's reductive, possessive, or both. 

"Who am I?" she says over his shoulder. 

"Lilith."

"Am I your queen?"

Hesitation brings an agony of need. "Yes."

"Call me your queen."

"Y-your queen." The words are quiet. Barely put together.

She wrenches his shoulder. " _My_ queen," she corrects.

"My … q-queen."

"Turn to me," she demands, and he must. "Say it louder for those in the back."

"My _queen_ ," he shouts.

The demons behind him holler and jeer.

Her smile is cold and sharp. Enervation wraps him like a cloak. The interior of his skull feels logy. Laden. 

She leaves him to stew.

Her absence—or perhaps his forced theatrics—emboldens the demons, who before had treated him with fearful respect. Lucifer cannot turn his head, but he can feel the wide berth between him and his fellow predators shrinking. Ravenous, they are lions stalking a flagging gazelle. 

Claws click on stone. Harsh, hot, heavy wheezing blusters against his back. But he cannot move.

"Not so bossy now, my king?" marvels Squee, a murmur. "Hmm, not so scary."

Lucifer wants to snarl. Smite. Anything to defend himself. 

He can't.

Clawed hands rifle through his feathers. Feathers Lucifer has permitted no demon but Maze ever to touch, and her only to cut them from his body. A giggle follows. "Oh, so soft! I never thought they'd be—"

"Squee!" Lilith snaps, returning. 

The hand behind Lucifer snatches itself away. "Sorry, Mother! I was only curious." 

Relief churns Lucifer's stomach. His vision fuzzes.

"Samael is _mine_ ," Lilith says, slinking sinuously toward them. "He is _mine_. You do not touch him." She peers over the crowd. " _No one_ touches him unless I permit it."

"Sorry, Mother," Squee repeats as a rumbling chorus of agreement rolls through the court. "Very sorry."

"You don't sound sorry, little one."

"I am! I swear!"

She puts a hand against Lucifer's chest, stroking the ridge of his collarbone before cupping his shoulder possessively. And then she laughs. "I suppose this makes a good demonstration. Unexpected, but ample." 

"Mother?" says Squee.

She crooks her finger. "Come here, little one." When silence stretches, she encourages, "Yes, yes, come here, dearest. Step around my king."

Movement. In the corner of Lucifer's vision. A small, hunched creature tiptoes forward, his hooked beak the only feature visible beyond the confines of his ratty cloak. "Yes, Mother?" 

She grabs Squee's shoulders. Spins him around to face Lucifer. Almost lovingly pets his head as she catches the edge of his hood with her nails and strokes backward, revealing his face. His beady, glittering eyes. He peers reverently up at Lucifer.

"My king," he says in a tiny voice. "I'm sorry. I was only curious. I meant no harm."

"Know you what they say on Earth of curiosity, little one?" Lilith asks. 

No. No, no, no. 

"What do they say?" Squee wonders innocently, awed.

Wrapping her arms around his upper body, she embraces him. Her cold gaze fixes on Lucifer's. Then, looking down to the child in her grasp, she says sweetly, "Kill him, my king. I want him dead."

Desire is ruinous, pyroclastic flow. Lucifer sobs as hot flush unfurls down his body. 

"What?" squawks Squee, squirming. "No. No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

Lucifer's nipples pucker, and his erection strains, and a sharp, spearing, siren scream tells him again and again all he needs for satisfaction—completion—is murder.

"Kill him for your queen," Lilith demands. "Kill him now!"

"No! Please!" shrieks Squee. "Please, no! I didn't mean to be bad!" 

Lucifer sinks to his knees, and then drops to all fours, his body heaving, his vision fuzzing. His feathers scrape across the floor. KILL HIM, KILL HIM, _KILL_ HIM. He—no. No, no. He trembles and writhes and moans, trying to resist until an end that isn't inevitable. He flops onto his side, his faculties incinerating themselves in slow motion. 

The room fades. Everything fades but his victim, now chained by the neck to a bolt hole. KILL HIM, KILL HIM, _KILL_ HIM. Snuffing him out would feel so good. 

"Please!" Squee begs. "Please, don't kill me! I didn't mean it! Please, I didn't mean to be bad! I'm not bad! Please! Pl—"

The crowd heckles and screams. 

And Lucifer burns. 

* * *

She disappears on one of her bedeviled walkabouts, but his compulsion to stand and present doesn't wane.

GET UP, GET UP, GET UP.

His head is spinning bolts of cotton. His body hurts. He wants to curl up and sleep, even here, amid peril, exposed, stripped, reduced, but he can't. He would pray for help, but he can't do that either. Something—some mental pathway connecting thought to action—only works when Lilith wants. The chain that had held Squee is empty, a fresh smear of dark ash staining the floor. He doesn't remember killing. He remembers nothing after ….

After … when?

 _Hey,_ she says. _It's me_. A soft voice he hasn't heard in eternity. _I'm here._

A shrilling phone drowns the echo of his heartbeat in his ears. Keyboards clack. The acrid scent of stale coffee fills his nose. The precinct. He takes a dragging breath.

"Detective?" he asks. "Have we a murder to solve?"

She beams at him. "Oh, come on, you know there're no bodies today."

"No?"

Her chair creaks as she climbs to her feet, pushing away from her desk. Her arms wrap low around his waist. "Not unless you count me and you," she says, pressing close. The warmth of her cheek bleeds through his shirt. "Just us."

He pulls her close, squeezing his eyes shut. A lump forms in his throat. "Detective, I want to go home."

"I know." 

"Please, help me."

"I can't. I can't be where you are."

" _Please_ , come anyway. I need help. Please, Detective. _Please_."

Fingers clutch his chin, nails digging into his skin, and he's ripped from his fantasy like a weed from wet soil. He's … on his knees again. "Oh, no, no, no, my king," Lilith says, her hungering eyes inches from his. She makes a tsk, tsk, tsk noise as she slaps his cheek. "None of that. You mustn't drift."

Need ravages his body, turning his soul to inferno, yanking him like an undertow in reverse, from placid depths of nothingness to sunburnt sand. The room comes back into focus. The pain and anxiety he left behind sinks in new teeth, a fiery bite in his limbs. And then—

"You mustn't ever drift," she repeats.

He cannot speak. He cannot look away. He cannot return to the Detective. Need mushrooms like a nuclear bomb, exploding. GET UP. GET UP, GET UP, _GET UP_. But his body is giving out. He sinks to the cold stone floor. Lilith strokes his hair, not letting go of his chin. 

"You'll get up if you want to please me," she warns him. 

His fingers clench, and he moans—wails—but he cannot rise. With a snort of disgust, she releases his chin. The side of his head smacks stone, and he lies there, bell rung, overwrought, sweltering, spent. He pumps his hips at nothing, weakly rutting with the floor as, mind disconnected, his body confuses itself, convinced there must be relief in coupling, no matter what with. 

"How disappointing," Lilith decides, rolling her eyes before announcing loudly, "Kill anyone who touches you except me." 

Then she sashays from the throne room, leaving him behind to present himself, or combust, but he's knackered. 

He combusts.

* * *

Time passes. 

Her addled absences are a blessing and a curse. She rarely touches him. Only leaves him to burn.

GET UP, GET UP, GET _UP,_ the urge pulses with every heartbeat, but he can't. 

He lies sprawled on his stomach, staring across a horizon of stone, too tired for more than drooling. The cold tile feels good against his burning skin. He's ripped open—long, weeping striations down his face, thighs, chest, and belly where he'd scratched himself. His throat hurts. His groin screams. The room throbs in and out of perception. Mostly out.

In a rare moment of awareness, dissonant notes—a minor seventh, slammed, not played—stab his ears. The chord is repeated, again, again, before whoever's playing takes a nonsensical jaunt across the keyboard. His keyboard. His piano. 

"I do not understand the appeal," rasps Zemiscion. "It hurts my ears."

"He says the noise makes pictures," replies Urt. 

"I do not see a picture."

"Maybe if you—"

"Stop with this _nonsense_ , will you?" Lilith scolds from somewhere to the left. "I cannot hear my own thoughts."

"Sorry, Mother."

Her feet pad across the open room, pausing briefly in front of Lucifer's face. She's so close, he could bite her. Trip her. Stab her with his bladed feathers. Yank out her spine. If he could just … move. If he could just—

She steps out of his field of view. The keyboard cover echoes loudly as she yanks it down. "Honestly," she says, tsk tsk tsking again, "this shouldn't even _be_ here. Such a horrible reminder of his ridiculous _reforms_. I wish it would go away. I wish it did not _exist_."

Lucifer's muscles bulge, pulling tauter than bowstrings. A spluttering cough catches in his throat. His body shudders, a new imperative wrecking through it. 

He's too tired to resist. 

"Perhaps we could smash it?" Urt is saying.

"No, no, we should burn it," replies Zemiscion. "I like fire."

"You always get to burn things," whines Urt. "Why can we not smash—"

"Childr—oh!" 

The act promising Lucifer completion offers none, only bitter frustration, and the always screaming urge to stand and present. But he cannot. He—

Lilith grabs a fistful of his hair, wrenching his neck, forcing him to gaze at the empty space his piano had occupied. "Did _you_ do that?" she snaps. Zemiscion and Urt are marveling at the vacancy, waving their hands through the air where the instrument had been. "Did _you_ unmake it?"

"Yes," he croaks. 

"I didn't know you could do such a thing."

He hadn't either, until he'd been forced. Until she'd _forced_ him. His heart splits as she makes him stare at the vacancy his only source of happiness had filled. His beautiful piano. 

She lowers herself to his eye level, tilting her head at him. "My king, are you _crying_?" 

"Yes."

A cold smile curves her lips. She rubs his cheek with her thumb, the pad of it coming away slippery, glistening. "Make a new one for me," she decides. "Show me. I want to see you make it."

She won't let him go—holds him in a twisted embrace that mocks affection—as the compulsion rolls over his body and forces him. Again. He wails against her neck, the sound a bare, pleading rasp. His Steinway Model D, made with East Indian rosewood, reappears in a flash, its glossy surface catching the light of the flickering sconces.

"Now, unmake it," she purrs, stroking his hair.

And he does.

"There, there," she says, making him look at it again. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Something in his mind twists. He has no fortitude. The ache in his chest lessens. The memory of his piano isn't quite so sharp. "No."

"No," she repeats, the word saccharine to the point of sickness. "No, it wasn't so bad. You didn't want it there either, did you?"

"No."

"You want to make me happy."

"Yes."

His mind keeps twisting. 

He's glad it's gone. The piano was a terrible thing.

She stares into his eyes, holding his shuddering body, entombing him in her attentions. "I wonder," she muses. "Make this room bigger by half."

There's a roar. In his chest, his brain. Hot, coppery-tasting fluid trickles from his nose. He shudders, pillaging his will for her. 

Zemiscion and Urt run screaming as the ceiling splits up the middle—a giant, snaking crack that fills in with new stone. Same with the walls. The floor. The obsidian chandelier swirls, adding another glass rung bedecked by black candles. 

He's panting. His head is buzzing, body aching, dirty wings sprawled limply across the floor, as the room settles, newly expanded. 

Lilith laughs, discarding him, and goggles as she wanders the perimeter. "To think, how you terrorized us over a bottle of scotch you likely made yourself. Was it a ruse?"

"No," he says. 

"You didn't know?" 

"No."

She licks her sultry, pouty lip. "Interesting."

He tries to gather his wits. Tries to do it again. Change things. Call a pillar of volcanic glass onto her head. Make the floor drop out. Anything. He _tries_. The ground shivers beneath them, rumbling like a miniature earthquake—

"Stop that," she tells him.

But it's not like calling fire. Something about it bypasses whatever she's done. Maybe his magic is greater than hers. The shivering becomes shaking, the glass chandelier making tinkling noises. A black glass chip breaks from the ceiling and slashes her cheek. The floor beneath her feet cracks—

Pain explodes in his gut. "I said, _stop that_ ," she snaps, releasing the hilt of a dagger. 

He tries to suck in a breath but can't. Every inhalation is a lightning streak, and bright kaleidoscopes swirl behind his eyelids. His vision fuzzes. Blood bubbles at his lips. His skull thunks against the floor as his neck slackens. He stares, dazed, gasping, at the ceiling. 

Her sneering face eclipses his view.

"Look at me," she tells him, and he must. "Forget this power of yours, Samael. You can't change anything. You're _mine_ , and you always will be."

He hurts too much. 

He's too tired.

When his mind twists again, he doesn't fight.

He succumbs.

And he forgets.

* * *

His life becomes a series of snapshots, each a lurid riot of color. The moments he's aware enough to process. To think. Everything else is a black, throbbing fog of debility he cannot penetrate.

"Build me a staircase to the Greater Throne," she tells him. "Now."

Her desire immolates his bafflement, forcing him to connect with a primal power he doesn't understand. He screams—croaks, chokes—funneling a firestorm through his body. Too big. The task is too big. Too much for all at once. He doesn't—he can't—how? His mind cracks like an egg smashed to the ground from a tenth-story window, and the world becomes white-hot noise. Everything he is, all he ever was or will be, diverts to reshaping reality. 

He is the Will.

Or, he was. 

Long ago.

* * *

"Forget about this," she says, and he does. 

Whatever _this_ was.

He offers no resistance—he's used up. He is a singular thought: wanting it to end.

But it doesn't end.

She is of the Endless, and he is Hers.

* * *

He isn't "here" when it happens.

"… Luci?" says a soft, familiar voice—baritone, gentle—in the dark of the empty throne room. He's been left alone again to froth and frenzy while she wanders. "Luci, what's wrong? What happened?"

A warm hand gently grips his shoulder. 

"Luci?"

The first kind touch in … he doesn't know.

Lucifer can't even tell him to run. 

* * *

She leaves the corpse beside him. It doesn't rot. Angels don't decay. Instead, Amenadiel stares with glassy eyes at nothing, and Lucifer can't look away. He isn't allowed. Not to wash the blood from his face. Or pick the gristle from his teeth.

* * *

Hell is different. Changed. 

The cells are gone, replaced by a vast, expanded Pit, now a visceral, blood-soaked demon playground. All souls are given form and tortured as if they were irredeemable. Not for celestial justice, but because it's "fun."

Ash falls anew, and Lilith revels, a goddess among ruin.

* * *

His throat hurts.

He can't remember why.

Howling, perhaps.

She drags him to the Pit. Has him lie upon a rack, next to screaming souls being branded with hot irons. His wings fan across the dirty floor. He expects to join the suffering chorus. Instead, she cups his genitals, sliding back his foreskin as she speaks to someone Lucifer can't see.

"Make him better for me. I like it to hurt a little when I ride a man." To him, she adds conspiratorially, "Don't kill this one, please."

She sits with him, stroking his face while the demon works. Her touch is different. More lascivious, now, than coldly appraising. He's groped. A stinging sensation makes him jerk. 

"Here, too," she says, pinching his left nipple. "The right as well."

She kisses his forehead when he flinches. 

"There, there," she soothes him. "I'll let you sleep when this is done."

Sleep. He hasn't slept in … ever. Total enervation allows him occasionally to doze, before desire keelhauls him back to consciousness.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she asks. "Sleep?"

"Yes," he croaks. 

She strokes his lower lip, patting it suggestively with her thumb. "What's the word?"

"Please."

"Please, who?"

"My … queen."

"Good," she murmurs. "Good boy."

His toes curl, and he rolls backward on the languid warm wave of his release, panting softly. She watches him, unblinking, as he sags against the metal rack. She's … never done that before. Utilized praise like a reward instead of a weapon. 

"What do you say?" she asks.

"Thank you." At her sharpening, almost feral look, he nearly trips on his tongue to add, "M-my queen."

When she doesn't replace his buzzing warmth and lassitude with torment, something he hasn't felt in ages stirs in his gut. 

Fear. Anxiety. 

Living in agony had, at least, been clarifying. Her threats had become meaningless because his life was already awful. 

She strokes his belly, tracing the puffy scar left behind by her brand. "I should renew this," she decides. "It seems faded. Don't you think?" 

"Yes," he rasps. 

She smiles. Boops his nose with her thumb. "We can deal with it later, of course," she assures him. "It's too much work to organize a show right now." 

And he's back to dread, caught like a ship on a shoal.

"Come now, my king," she says almost lovingly, helping him stumble off the rack. The demon who'd "decorated" him nods approvingly, stuffing her needles into a tanned leather sleeve.

Lilith takes him back to the palace, to her bedroom. The sheets are gritty, ash-stained sateen. "Sleep when you're able," she tells him. "I want you bright-eyed and well-rested when I return."

Definitely something she's never done. 

Trepidation quivers in his gut.

"Settle in." She pets his arm. "I'll return later."

Her departure doesn't ease his nerves. Shaking, he sinks onto the mattress, pulling up the covers. He hasn't been allowed a covering in …. He hasn't been allowed a covering. He curls onto his side, staring into space. His nipples sting. His penis. They throb in time with his heartbeat as his body tries to heal wounds that aren't healable. 

What will she do to him? 

Sex is one thing she hadn't seemed interested in forcing from him before. Or, maybe, this is some new game. 

He doesn't know. 

He doesn't like this new worrying. 

Nervous sweat slicks his skin. He clutches the edge of the top sheet like it's an adamantium shield, knowing all the while: it's nothing. Tissue paper. 

She'll have him, if she desires.

No blanket will save him. 

When she returns to find him staring emptily into space, his body trembling, she snarls. "I thought I told you to sleep! I want you to sleep."

The breath punches from him, and he moans. 

"Stop, stop," she huffs when she sees the folly of her command. She sits beside his hip, caressing the curve of bone through the sheet. "Shh. Shh. Calm yourself."

He stiffens, but as her desire sweeps through him, makes him _feel_ , his muscles relax, and he sags, suddenly boneless. Why should he be nervous about sex? He used to have a lot of it. It's lovely.

"Better?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Good boy."

He rides the heady warm wave of a release he never wanted, his vision fuzzing at the edges as he strains pleasantly against the bedding. She strokes his arm. His shoulder. His aching body eases, pulsing with a pleasant, dull hum.

"What do you say?" she asks.

"Thank you, my queen." 

"Relax," she tells him, and he must.

Worries fade.

"Now, sleep when you're able, my king," she adds. His eyelids dip. "Dream. We'll have fun once you've rested."

A falling sensation pulls the bed out from under him, and the warm, welcoming hand of torpor drags him down. 

* * *

He's in a place with sun and stars. With green trees and real food and _her_. He's with her. 

_Hey,_ she says, her hair a waterfall of blonde wisps. _It's me. I'm here._

 _Detective._ He hasn't seen her in … too long. His lower lip trembles. _Please, I want to go home._

_I know._

_Please, help me._

_I can't._

_Please, Detective. Please. Please, I'll do anything._

She wraps her arms around him. _Why not_ _come to me instead? You're the one with wings._

 _I can't use them_. 

She smiles up at him, her green eyes catching the light. _I think you could if you tried._

 _I_ have _tried. Detective, I've tried! Think you I desire to be her plaything?_

 _Lucifer._ She clasps his face with her palms. Her touch is a balm. A benediction. _Lucifer, look at me. Look._

He does.

_You're the angel who Fell for choice. For free will._

_I bloody_ know _that_ , he snaps. 

_So, use that. Be stubborn. Be brave. Be_ you. _My Morning Star._

 _But what does that_ mean? 

_Remember._

_Remember_ what _?_

She presses her lipsto—

His eyes snap open when Lilith grabs his already abraded wrist, pulling his hand toward the headboard. "I can't let you sleep _forever_ , my king," she chides, smiling emptily as she strokes his face. His arm is pulled taught, the skin of his wrist a small agony as it's ripped open by sharp metal edges. A lock clicks into place. She crawls over his body to restrain his other arm. 

He doesn't know how long he's been asleep, but for the first time since she claimed him, his mind doesn't feel replaced by wet cotton and ash. He can think, and his hurts are keen like blades again.

He calls fire.

Nothing happens.

The other lock clicks. The other wrist burns.

His eyes prickle with frustration.

She pulls down the blanket, slowly revealing his body. His stomach roils. He pants.

"I've been waiting for this," she says, stroking his bare leg to the ankle, "and my patience is only so great." 

He glares through a wet wall at the ceiling as she finishes restraining him, stretching his limbs until he worries—fantasizes?—he might split down the middle and die. The metal chains—made of normal ore, not Hell-forged—he could break in a blink if he weren't commanded not to by their mere existence, fastened tight by _her_. She climbs over him, straddling his belly, tweaking the rings she'd had punched through his nipples, but he cannot move. 

"Rested now, my king?"

"Yes." 

"What's wrong, then?" 

"Nothing." The lie rankles, but he cannot speak truth. 

"Do you like being chained to my bed?"

"Yes."

"Do you want me?"

"Yes."

Her eyes narrow. "What are you _really_ thinking about?"

" _Home_."

Her expression sours like old milk, but she kisses him anyway. A sharp spike of not-his-arousal forces him to reciprocate, but he gives the barest minimum to comply. A peck. Close-lipped.

She makes a disgusted sound, pulling back. Her face says it all. She thought she'd finally broken him. 

"Tell me you want me," she demands.

"You want me."

"I mean, tell me, 'I want you!'"

"I want you."

She slaps his face. "You've the affect of someone reading a pamphlet."

He says nothing. He can't. 

She grips his chin, her sharp nails clutching him like talons as she sneers. "I thought you would appreciate not being punished. I thought you would appreciate me being _nice_ to you. Why aren't you appreciative?"

"I am, my queen."

He tries again to call fire. Nothing. Resignation sweeps over him. He will be used in _every_ way. No matter what his Dream Detective tells him.

"You're trying to hurt me, aren't you?"

He holds onto his reply despite the need to answer squeezing his mind like a flower press. 

"You _are_!" she snaps, scrambling away from him. "How _dare_ you! I thought …."

" _Yes_ ," he grits out, at last, twisting the meaning of his forced reply. Yes, he is still Lucifer Morningstar, and he will never bend. She plays with literal fire. 

"How can you—it's been _forever!_ I've been patient!" she whinges, pacing at the foot of the bed, yanking on her hair so hard some of it rips out at the root. Her madness. Intensifying. "How have you thoughts left in your head?"

"I Fell for free will."

"Fuck free will!" She hisses at him. "It's all a lie anyway." 

Desire ignites, and he barely strangles his scream. FUCK FREE WILL. _FUCK_ FREE WILL. 

"Fine," she decides. " _Fine_. If I cannot break you, I will _change_ you." 

No. No, he—

"I want you to want me," she says.

WANT HER, WANT HER, WANT HER. FUCK FREE WILL.

She approaches him again, folding her arms as she smiles coldly at him. She sits on the bed beside him, the mattress barely dipping under her meager weight. "No. No, Lucifer Morningstar, _my_ slave, _my_ pet, the angel who _Fell,_ I've changed my mind. I want you to _love_ me."

LOVE HER, LOVE HER, LOVE HER.

Freezing hot tendrils wrap around his brain and pull. A white wave undertow, dragging him down to the deep.

He thinks of the Detective as he's dying.

"I'll wait," Lilith says primly, like he's nothing more than a commercial, interrupting her favorite program. 

But he will not.

He will not love _her_.

LOVE HER, LOVE HER, LOVE HER.

He keens, immobilized at first. Minutes. Hours. But as his mind dissolves, he twists instinctively to escape the lash of desire's whip. The chains snap from the bolts at their ends. He writhes, tearing fresh runnels in his flesh as he rakes himself, as his skin turns to fire. LOVE HER, he's commanded. LOVE _HER_. 

The Detective lingers. 

"What are you thinking of?" Lilith prods.

"You."

She slaps him. "What are you _actually_ thinking of?"

"Home."

With a growl, she drags him off the bed. His mental image of salvation shatters. He lands in a tangled heap, the broken chains clanking onto the floor after him. LOVE HER, LOVE HER, LOVE _HER_. A grieving wail courses from him, unbidden. Across the room, Amenadiel's glassy stare accuses. No. No. No. No more.

"Give unto me," Lilith demands, looming, "everything that you are."

He yells as her will scalds. His vision fuzzes. He scrabbles at the cold floor, trying and failing for purchase. LOVE HER, LOVE HER, LOVE _HER_. GIVE HER EVERYTHING. All he needs is to give in. He would have peace. Completion. An end.

 _Be stubborn_ , the Detective said. _Be brave._

_Be you._

_Remember._

He pictures her again. Her first iteration shoots Lilith in the face. _He_ wants to shoot Lilith in the face. But then she settles. Pulls his head into her lap. Strokes his sweaty hair.

LOVE HER, LOVE HER, LOVE _HER_. GIVE HER EVERYTHING.

Sobbing, he focuses on her face. He remembers every contour. Every curve. The infinite ways sunlight can glint in her eyes. It's been _so_ long.

"I want to go home," he says, shuddering, his metaphysical bonds loosening just a little, just enough. "Please, Detective."

"How the hell are you speaking?" Lilith demands.

LOVE HER, LOVE HER, LOVE _HER_. GIVE HER EVERYTHING.

Breaths saw in his chest. He cannot escape the wave. Not when he is here. In this place. This rotting-on-its-moorings, punitive _place_ , where Dad doomed him to misery.

Another burning wave crashes over him. The palace fractures. Shudders. A spiral of obsidian dust flits from the ceiling to the floor like a felled moth. And then another. And another. The earth beneath them groans.

"No," Lilith says. "No, I told you to _forget_ your power!"

What power?

Love her. 

Love her. 

Love _her_.

The Detective reaches for him. 

He reaches back, desiring a life where Hell isn't. Where Lilith isn't. A life where he can go _home_.

His wish channels through his body in a heartbeat. Pain blossoms. Agony. Anguish. Lilith shrieks. The palace, the universe, shrieks with her, hurting in tandem, and she blows to dust, each speck and fleck bright like molten metal before dispersing on sulfuric wind. The palace collapses, each floor clapping onto the one below it—a rumbling furor. The pile plunges deep into the ash, crushing him, but he is invulnerable to harm she didn't wish for. Hell ruptures like a broken piñata. Souls, screaming, demons, flailing—they funnel in all directions. 

Into the black.

Into silence.

Into the Void Creation had filled. 

The noose that had strangled him, constricted him, kept him Hers, remains in death, an evil specter he cannot grasp, cannot understand, cannot Will away. It's too strong. Too strange.

LOVE HER, his blood sings. 

But there is no her, anymore. He's rudderless, yet he _needs._ Metaphysical, caustic barbs snag his thoughts. Real chains tangle his limbs, still tearing skin because she'd desired it.

He convulses. Yells.

LOVE _HER_. GIVE HER EVERYTHING.

"How?" he gasps.

The specter shivers like it's alive, then plunders his mind, rifling through hopes and dreams, chasing every desperate desire to its root. 

They're on the balcony. 

The Detective is sobbing, and he _hurts_.

 _Please, don't go_ , she begs. _I love you._

The barbs shred his thoughts. He can't breathe. Can't resist.

Don't go. Love _her_. Give _her_ everything instead, the specter decides.

A bedlam of gnarled, repurposed memories turned commands.

One—love her—already fulfilled, slides off like water over glass. The other two, doable, but not done yet, and he must.

He _must,_ and so he does.

She's standing in her kitchen, crying behind a cabinet door.

He uses the last of his Will to beg, "Help. Please," before the phantom chains choke away his voice again, wholly reasserted. In a bewildered blur, he sinks, drifts. He's too hot. The barbs affix his soul to hers, hook by sharpened hook. 

The profusion of pain is profound. Too much, even for a divine constitution. The world crackles with static. He thinks he can hear himself screaming as air rakes across his vocal cords in the wrong direction. 

Then … nothing. 

* * *

A blob waves in front of his face, whiplashing him back to the present. His shoulders are gripped and then shaken. "Lu! Lu, oh Dad, oh Dad, please, don't faint. I don't know how to get us out of—"

Oh.

He isn't done. 

The memories are lacerations on his psyche; he's hemorrhaging.

But he isn't done. 

Azrael is sobbing. Amenadiel is barely alive. They aren't safe. They cannot live in Void. They'll die if Lucifer doesn't make himself move.

"Lu," Azrael pleads. "Lu. Lu, snap out of it! _Please_." 

Swallowing thickly, nodding, he gathers Amenadiel, clutching fistfuls of his t-shirt to hold him steady. Azrael links her arm with his, elbow to elbow. She's freezing. He re-spreads his trembling, taxed wings—minus one primary feather.

"Hold tight," he rasps.

"Where are we going?" Azrael asks.

Lucifer flees this place with all he has left, his last manic thought a hurting, desperate echo of his former self, "Home." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have posted TWO chapters today, 46 & 47\. Be sure not to miss the next one!


	47. "becoming"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously, in chapter 46:
> 
> In the past, Lucifer wakes up compelled. 
> 
> Lilith displays him naked in the throne room. Because he’s unable to defend himself, demons grow bold. Squee pets his wings. Lilith disciplines Squee by forcing Lucifer to kill him. She instructs Lucifer to kill anyone who touches him. She leaves Lucifer trapped in a near permanent feedback loop. Eventually, he’s too exhausted to stand. 
> 
> Later, demons Zemiscion and Urt are pounding on the piano keys in the throne room. Lilith wishes the piano would go away, forcing Lucifer to connect with his long forgotten Will. He unmakes the piano. Lilith, shocked, then uses his power to increase the size of her throne room. Lucifer discovers his Will can bypass the spurse. He tries to harm Lilith with it, but she’s too quick, stabs him, and forces him to forget his power. 
> 
> Lilith later utilizes him to change Hell into a giant torture pit. When Amenadiel arrives to help, Lucifer, still under the command to kill anyone who touches him, slays his brother. 
> 
> Many years later, Lilith’s takes Lucifer to her bedroom and tells him to rest. He dreams of Chloe, who urges him to remember. He’s ripped awake by Lilith, who taunts him, but he’s well rested finally and able to resist. Lilith is infuriated and demands that he love her, but he refuses, instead enduring the compulsion to his breaking point.
> 
> Despite not remembering he possesses the power of Will, he reconnects with it in desperation, and destroys both Lilith and Hell. The original master/slave bond now broken, the spurse pillages Lucifer’s mind for a new directive. All he can think about is the moment he left Chloe crying on the balcony, when she begged him to stay.
> 
> The spurse forces him to return and submit to Chloe. "Don't go. Love her. Give _her_ everything instead."
> 
> When he arrives in Chloe’s kitchen, the curse binds itself to her, and Lucifer loses consciousness in the process.
> 
> In the present day, Lucifer takes Azrael and Amenadiel home.
> 
> And, now, on with our story!

Chloe spends the first agonizing hour pacing in front of the television. Trixie cries softly, cuddled in Dan's lap as he rubs her back. Maze and Linda hover by the kitchen divider, talking, drinking. Mostly drinking, as Linda absently rocks Charlie's bassinet.

"I'm sure he's fine," Ella says from the couch, in a wide-eyed, panicked way that isn't reassuring. "Totes fine!"

 _Please, Lucifer,_ Chloe prays. _Please, be okay, and come back soon._

But he's not compelled anymore, and she's not even sure he can hear her unless he's listening. Humans prayers sound like buzzing gnats to him, or so he's implied. Still, she'll keep trying.

She prays intermittently for hours, until the sun sets, and Dan takes a grieving Trixie home to his apartment to sleep. The Tribe lingers with wine and boardgames. They try to distract her. Ticket to Ride again. 

She's staring at the orange and black train lines snaking from Edinburgh, her rainbow of cards fanned in front of her face, when her fingers start to shake, and the game board blurs. 

"What if he's hurt?" she muses aloud. "What if he's trapped? What am I gonna do, knowing he's in trouble where I can't do a goddamned thing to help?" 

"Is there really nothing we can do, though?" Linda says, glancing around. "Even if we can't survive Hell"—she frowns at Maze—"we have a demon on our team."

Maze fingers the hilt of her karambit. "Lilith's a pushover—"

"Assuming she doesn't make Lucifer fight for her," Chloe interrupts morosely.

"Lilith who? Wait, she could do that?" says Ella. "Is _that_ the SNAFU? Lucifer being forced to fight for this chick?"

"Fuck that," Maze says. "She can't make Lucifer do shit if I slit her throat before she speaks."

"Um," Chloe says, "with the way I've seen the spurse work, he'd be compelled to assist her with the whole … not-bleeding-to-death thing. In which case, you'd have a handful, regardless."

"Does the spurse make him psychic?" 

"What's a spurse?" asks Ella. 

"… No?" Chloe says.

Maze shrugs. "So, I give her a Colombian necktie when he's not there. Easy."

"That's"—Ella grimaces—"graphic."

"It's not like she can die." Another shrug. "She's like Cain except way more fucked up."

"Lilith as in before Eve?" Ella asks. "Or …?"

Chloe doesn't see the point in keeping secrets anymore. Lucifer's free from compulsion, or he desperately needs their help. Either way … secrets are low priority. "Lucifer was compelled by black magic to do whatever I wanted. I figured out how to mostly give him autonomy, but we're pretty sure Lilith kept him prisoner before he escaped to me, and now he's gone back to where she probably is."

"What."

Maze throws her cards onto the game board, sending train pieces plinking across the floor. "I just need to actually _get_ there first. I can't cross dimensions by myself."

All of them drop their cards, game forgotten. 

"What about John?" Chloe wonders. "When you left to find him, you said you weren't sure he was in this dimension. Right? You said that. So—"

"He still around?" Maze asks neutrally.

Which isn't a no. "I don't know. I didn't ask him to stay." But Chloe has his e-mail address now. And he's seenfirsthand Lucifer can love. He's seen it. Maybe, he's adjusted his stance on Lucifer returning to Hell?

"Could we get another angel for shuttle services?" Ella suggests. "Sure, Lucifer, Amenadiel, and Rae-Rae are out, but Lucifer said he's got _thousands_ of siblings. Maybe one would answer a prayer?"

"But Lucifer's been praying this whole time, and nobody came. So have you, yeah?"

"Only to God and Rae-Rae. I didn't put anybody else specific on blast." Ella makes a face. "Really, Lilith? _Lilith_ is the bad guy?"

"Yeah. Her."

"My mom," Maze adds. 

"Jeez, remind me to hug my family later." Ella rubs her chin, thinking. "Who could we pray to? I think the Bible only mentions a couple of angels by name—it's been a while since I've read it." She turns to Maze. "Who's real, and who's myth?"

"I only know the ones Lucifer's bitched about."

"Raguel," Chloe says. "He's mentioned Raguel. Archangel of Justice. And Gabriel. Oh, and Uriel."

Ella grabs the pen and paper they'd been using to keep score and starts scribbling. "Raguel, Gabriel, Uriel. Okay. Who else?"

Maze sighs before sipping from her scotch glass. "No idea. Uriel's dead. Michael's … gone. Or something."

"Lucifer hasn't bitched about his family more than that?" asks Ella. "Huh. I'm kind of shocked."

"He doesn't like to talk about it, and I never pushed." Maze makes a face like she sucked a lemon. "Why would I wanna hear whiny stories about _Heaven,_ anyway? My siblings are evil, too, but you don't hear me bitching."

"Remiel?" interjects Linda. "Remiel's the one who tried to take Charlie before Amenadiel defeated her."

"Um. Okay." Chloe winces. "Maybe we save her as a last resort, and make sure you and Charlie are far away when we do it." Her chest tightens as she inadvertently focuses on the clock. 10:42 p.m. Lucifer's been gone over twelve hours. "Any idea how much time has passed in Hell since he left?"

"Years, probably," says Maze.

" _Maze_ ," Linda almost hisses. 

"Oh," says Chloe. "Okay."

Years. Probably. Years, _probably_. 

"Don't worry yet," Ella says. "I'm sure he just … took a detour. Like, what's Pluto look like this time of year? Pretty?"

Chloe can't think about this anymore. She can't. She rubs her eyes, rising to her feet. "I'm sorry, guys, I'm just. I'm really tired. You can stay as long as you want, but." She takes a stumbling step toward her bedroom. And another. She wants to curl up in sheets that smell like him. She needs—

Three bodies, thumping and flailing, blink onto the floor at the bottom of the steps. Lucifer, a dark-haired woman clinging to his shoulder, and Amenadiel cradled in his arms. Lucifer's naked again, charred bits of his suit stuck to his body in places. He sinks to his knees, his massive wings dragging behind him, knocking into things. Amenadiel sprawls, limp, and the woman slumps into a seated position by the center island.

"Detect—tective," Lucifer gasps.

"Lucifer!" Chloe says.

" _Amenadiel!_ " adds Linda.

"… Rae-Rae?" says Ella.

"Huh," says Maze. "Guess I'm not stabbing my mom in her sleep."

* * *

Of everyone, Amenadiel seems to be the worst off. His limbs are fleshy ice cubes, and his consciousness is altered enough he's not making sense. Maze and Linda drag him upstairs to Lucifer's bedroom, where they bundle him with blankets, heating pads, and hot packs.

The woman—Azrael?—is cold to the touch, her lips bluish, her body shivering like a spiderweb in the breeze, but she's awake and talking in actual sentences. Lucifer isn't cold, but seems close to collapse, and his nose won't stop bleeding. Real blood. Not compulsion gook. 

Chloe brings him his robe and slippers and a blanket. Tissues, too. He and the woman angel curl up on the couch by the fireplace, both of them under the comforter, the woman additionally bundled beneath Lucifer's fluffed up down. His right wing hangs off the side of the sofa, sprawling across the hardwood floor like a dead, forgotten limb. Lucifer stares blankly into space. 

Ella rushes into the kitchen to make hot tea.

"Lucifer?" Chloe says, checking his wrist. His pulse is fluttering like his heart is skipping beats, and his breathing sounds funny. Raspy. Labored. "Lucifer?" 

"Take a feather to Amenadiel," he says weakly around the bloodied tissue, his eyes open to glassy slits in the lamplight. He nudges the woman beside him. "Please. You, as well."

"No way," says maybe-Azrael, lifting her head off his shoulder to squint accusingly through her spectacles at him. "You're hurt; I'll be fine now."

"But—"

"You need them more than me," she says, steamrolling him. "I'll heal the old-fashioned way. Don't worry."

He doesn't argue, like the fight in him just … died by knockout. Crimson and shiny, the tissue he'd been holding to his nose drops into his lap. Fresh blood smears his lip as maybe-Azrael reaches over to help him.

"Tip your head back, Lu."

"No, forward," Chloe says.

Maybe-Azrael frowns. "Huh?"

"You tip your head forward for a nosebleed. Or … humans do, at least."

"Really? Cool." Maybe-Azreal nudges him, grasping the nape of his neck with pale fingers. He's pliant. His chin flops to his chest.

"Your feathers heal?" Chloe asks, hesitantly. When Lucifer, wheezing, offers no explanation, she turns to the woman angel, who quirks a smile in return.

"Yeah, they heal," the woman says. "Amenadiel might need one. I don't. I'm Azrael, by the way. People I like call me Rae-Rae."

"Rae-Rae." Chloe splays a palm against her chest. "I'm Chloe."

"Duh." Azrael's smile widens. "Of course I know who you are."

"Sorry. Sorry, I'm … I'm trying to keep up."

"Not doing half bad, I'd say."

Chloe searches the long edge of Lucifer's white down. "I just … pull a feather?" That seems so wrong to contemplate. On multiple levels. 

But Azrael nods. "Maybe a little one near his shoulder. The scapulars. Should give Menny a boost."

"Lucifer, you're sure?" Chloe asks.

He's staring at the floor. 

"Lucifer? Hey, you okay?"

He sniffs. Blinks. Doesn't pick up his head. "Yes. Please, help Amenadiel. Help him. You must."

"You okay?"

"Help Amenadiel."

Disquiet thrums in her veins—an intense sense of wrongness—but … she inches forward in a slow, hesitant motion until her fingertips brush the soft swell of feathers rising behind his shoulder. His down feels like spun silk, each feather sunshine heating her palm. 

Trying not to linger offensively, she selects a curling bit of fluff about the length of her thumb, and yanks. He grunts, quiet, weak, and pained. 

"Sorry," she whispers, stroking the place she stole the feather from. A tiny trickle of red stains the luminous white, but stops quickly when she applies pressure. "Sorry."

He doesn't acknowledge her. She pushes her fingers through his hair, pressing a kiss to his forehead—he's clammy and quivering— _wrong_ —and then she heads upstairs.

* * *

"Amenadiel?" Linda is saying loudly as Chloe enters the spare bedroom. "Amenadiel, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"

Blankets bundle Amenadiel like he's the filling in a big burrito. His eyes are closed. Linda sits on the bed beside him, hovering. Maze stands by the window, arms folded, like she doesn't want to get too close. 

"Try this," Chloe says, holding out Lucifer's little feather. Its filaments glow like a shining star.

Linda frowns. "What do I do with it?"

Chloe shrugs.

Maze pushes off the wall, her boots hitting the floor noisily. "Press it against his skin where he's hurt."

"Where is he hurt, though?" Linda says, boggling. "He looks fine, superficially."

"His chest!" yells Azrael up the steps. "Put it on his sternum."

Linda gently pulls back the blankets. The hot packs they'd stuffed into his armpits and groin crinkle as his body is shifted. Though his chest is brown and bare, smooth and unblemished, his t-shirt sports a blood-crusted hole the size of a grapefruit. They'd ignored it before, since there'd been no damage underneath it, but, now ….

Chloe, Maze, and Linda share a worried look. Maze shrugs. "Well," Linda says in a _fuck-it-why-not_ tone, and lays the feather on his chest.

The glow intensifies, searing Chloe's retinas like a flashbang grenade, until she claps a hand over her eyes. When light eases, she peeks through the gaps in her fingertips. The glow is sapping away, dripping into his pores like sweat in reverse. Amenadiel sucks in a deep, clear breath as he arches his big body backward, the mattress creaking with the shifting weight. 

"Amenadiel?" Linda asks. "Amenadiel!"

His bright brown eyes open, blinking. He looks at Linda. And then at Maze. And then at Chloe. His arms are bound by blankets. A thick, discombobulated noise sticks in his throat. 

"Amenadiel?" Linda prods, stroking his face. "Can you hear us? It's Linda. You're safe; I promise."

"Linda," he croaks.

"Yes!" Linda beams, her expression injected with enough joy to light a Christmas tree. "Yes, hi!" Tears spill, snaking underneath the dark edges of her glasses. "Hi! Welcome back!"

A smile tugs at his lips. "Char … lie?" 

"He's downstairs. I'll bring him up in a minute, so you can say hello." She strokes his face. His chest. Looking at Chloe and Maze she adds, "Oh, he's warm again."

"How long?" he rasps.

Linda sucks in a wet breath, overcome. Chloe answers for her, "About five months." Closer to six, now, actually.

He blinks. And blinks again. "Five?"

"Yeah. You've been gone almost as long as Lucifer."

"Lucifer," he echoes in a strange tone.

"He's with Ellen," Maze says. She folds her arms, leaning over the bed with a frown. "So, what the hell happened to you?" 

"Lucifer."

"Yeah, with Ellen."

"No," Amenadiel says. " _Lucifer_."

As if that's supposed to mean something in particular. Linda strokes his arm. "He's back, too, with your sister, warming up. Do you need anything?"

But all he says is, "Lucifer." 

And then he falls asleep.

* * *

Ella sets down two steaming mugs of tea as Chloe rejoins them. Azrael grabs one of the cups. "Oh, thank you," she says, slurping as she stares vacantly into the fire. "This feels wonderful."

Lucifer sleeps, conked beside her like a broken doll. Tiny, whistling snores escape his mouth at odd intervals. 

"He did something," Azrael says, the sharp edge of stress in her tone. "I don't know what. I think he broke himself a little."

"Broke himself _how_?" Chloe says. "Did what?"

"I don't know. Never seen him do anything like it before. Looked like it hurt."

"Can he heal?" adds Chloe, tension funneling like a cyclone. "Does he need a hospital?"

Azrael takes a sip of tea. "Amenadiel was dead. Now, he's not."

"Holy shirt balls," Ella says. "Like _Jesus_?"

"Well, no," Azrael says slowly. There's an awkward pause. "And I don't think a human doctor would be much help for a Lightbringer with a busted bulb."

O … kay. Not reassuring.

"What happened, exactly?" Chloe asks. "He was only supposed to be gone a few seconds, but instead took twelve hours and came back with you." And, now, her apartment is a freaking angel hospital. "Not that I mind; just … it's a little unexpected."

"Yeah," Ella adds, "we're kinda behind the curve at this point. Is the ghost thing fixed?"

"What ghost thing?" Azrael asks.

"You know. The apocalypse?" At Azrael's blank look, Ella shifts nervously in her seat. "Gosh, this doesn't bode super well, does it?" 

"Maybe you should fill me in," Azrael says, "and I'll try to explain from there."

* * *

Hell is gone.

Poof. Disappeared. Nonexistent. 

Which means … what, exactly? Lilith is dead? Lucifer has no kingdom to babysit anymore? The world is still kind of ending because the afterlife is broken? Azrael seems confident she can sweep up all the ghosts once she's healed a bit, at least—put them in temp storage or something until this gets figured out. But … what is there to figure out? 

How do they fix _Hell_? 

Why isn't _God_ fixing it?

How did Hell disappear to begin with?

It's such a big bucket of mixed good and bad Chloe's having trouble deciding how to feel. Her head's still spinning as Maze lugs Lucifer up to their bedroom. "Thanks," she tells Maze, pulling the blankets over him—difficult, with his massive wings in the way. "You staying?"

Linda had sacked out in Amenadiel's room. Ella had found Chloe's old sleeping bag and crashed in the living room with Azrael. 

"Nah," says Maze with a shrug. "I really need to stab something."

For once, Chloe can almost agree. 

"Seeya," Maze says.

"Night!" Chloe calls after her. Maze turns toward the door. "Hey, Maze?"

"What."

"Thanks for hunting down John. For helping us. I don't think I thanked you."

"You didn't."

"Well, thank you. I mean it."

"No problem. Always fun kidnapping sanctimonious weasels."

Lucifer stares blankly as Chloe climbs into bed with him and flips out the light. The front door slams, shaking the picture frames, announcing Maze's departure. The white warm glow of his feathers deafens all hints of orange flooding from the street lamp outside. Dark circles grip his eyes, making them look sunken and sapped. 

"Sorry we woke you," she says.

"Detective."

She peers across the mattress at him. "You okay?" 

"No."

The covers rustle as she slides closer. He's shaking. More than before. This time, like someone plunged him into a polar lake. She snuggles close, draping an arm over him. "Can I help?" 

"Detective, I think I did something."

"Fixing Amenadiel?" 

"No. I mean, yes, but." He takes a shivery breath, a sick, curdled sound replacing articulate words. "No."

"Hey," she murmurs. "Hey, hey. You cold?"

His wings ruffle up, pulling tightly around him—her, too, in the process. She tangles her legs with his, pushing closer.

"I forgot," he says, the words small. His face is far too pale, bathed by his soft glow. "Detective, I … I forgot."

"Lilith?"

"More than that. I feel as though I'm becoming."

"Becoming what?"

"What I always should have been." 

_She used something I'd long forgotten was mine,_ he'd said when they'd been bargaining before their BDSM scene. _Something primordial._

Questions bump and jostle like bumper cars in her head, no single one immediately winning the fight to be spoken. 

"Detective, it was _me_ ," Lucifer whispers, continuing. 

"What was you?"

"Everything."

Her stomach swoops. "Lucifer, I—"

"No," he says, and she quiets. His fingers clench into trembling fists. She grabs his hands, cupping them between her palms, but he won't stop shaking. He presses his forehead to hers. "My head is pounding."

"Do you need anything?"

"Sleep."

She presses her lips to his. "Okay. We'll talk tomorrow."

"Yes," he echoes faintly. "Tomorrow." Spoken like he doesn't think there's going to _be_ a tomorrow.

At least, he's here. He'd kept his promise in spirit, if not to the letter. His shivering worries her. His shock worries her. Hell being _gone_ worries her. But the warmth of his feathers is a hearth fire, and after a long day drowning in fear … she finds it difficult to stay awake.

"I love you," she murmurs.

He doesn't speak, but his wing pulls closer, pressing against her spine. 

The world fades, after that.

* * *

"This is amazing," says Azrael, sipping her coffee. "What is this?"

"Just Starbucks," Chloe says with a shrug. "The Blonde Roast."

"I'll have to get some."

"For … Heaven?"

"What? We have coffee makers, y'know. Hard to have Heaven without coffee."

"Good point."

The morning is brisk and blue. They huddle together, letting the coffee warm their bellies as they sit swathed in blankets around the table on Chloe's back patio. Chloe, Linda, Ella, and the Angel of Death. That Chloe had made it to her second cup of coffee before registering she's caffeinating next to "Charon," well, chalk that up to her strange new life normalizing. It's good to be in the know.

"So," Ella wonders, "what are we gonna do?" 

"I don't know what we _can_ do," Linda replies.

"Are we supposed to sit around waiting for God to fix this clusterduck on his own and hope the world doesn't end by Tuesday?"

"Well, we _are_ the measly humans in this equation. One of the less fun things about celestial planning sessions."

Ella hugs herself. "Man, I could really go for a helping of ignorance-is-bliss."

"No kidding."

"Maybe we should figure out why Hell exploded?" Ella asks. "There's gotta be a reason. I bet it's connected with Lucifer's amnesia." Her chair creaks as she straightens. She'd gotten filled in the rest of the way on Lucifer's situation last night. "Like … maybe that's whyhe's got amnesia. Maybe he got hit on the head by a Hell chunk"—Ella smacks her fist against her palm for emphasis—"when it went kerplooey!"

"That's," Linda says, frowning, "not actually a terrible hypothesis."

All eyes turn to Azrael.

"Don't look at me," she says. "I was just dropping somebody off when it blew."

"Maybe Amenadiel will have some thoughts when he wakes up," says Linda.

"Your guess is as good as mine." Azrael's nose tips up, and she brightens as she calls over their shoulders into the house, "Hey, Lu, do _you_ remember anything about Hell exploding?" 

Lucifer stands in the kitchen, bits of his hair arching in different directions like a rocket launch gone wrong. He reaches upward, grabbing an unopened bottle of Glenfiddich from the top cabinet. He's still pale, but his grip seems steady now. Glass clinks against the cabinet as he sets the bottle and a cup on the counter to pour himself a double. The liquor level keeps rising in the glass. Okay … maybe a triple double. A quadruple triple?

"… Lu?" repeats Azrael doubtfully.

"Feeling better?" Chloe adds. 

He shuffles like an old man onto the patio, though somehow the liquid doesn't spill. "The child is awake," he says. "It's starting to fuss." 

"Really?" Linda asks, frowning. They'd moved the bassinet to Trixie's room, away from foot traffic. "I don't hear—"

Lucifer arches a sharp, expectant eyebrow.

"Oh. Right." Linda rubs her eyes, gesturing at her chair. "Guess it's bottle time after all. Take my seat, if you want." 

They perform an awkward, contactless do-si-do as Linda scoots past him. He claims the chair she'd vacated, setting his glass on the table and drawing the afghan over his shoulders. He twines the wool around his hands, pulling the blanket tighter and tighter, until it looks as though the threads may snap apart in protest. 

"Hungry?" Chloe asks.

He stares blankly at his glass. "No."

 _I feel as though I'm becoming,_ he'd said. 

"Hey," she says. When he glances dully at her, she leans across her chair railing—so sharply the metal digs into her side—and kisses his cheek. His lips. "You don't have to be up. Go back to sleep, if you want."

"I can't," he replies, sounding odd. Sounding … off. 

"Lu, are you okay?" Azrael asks, boggling at him. "You look _awful_."

"I …." He shifts underneath the afghan, squeezing his eyes shut briefly before offering his sister a wobbly, _wrong_ smile. "Don't mind me, my dear. It's only that I didn't sleep well." 

"Ugh," says Ella. "Tell me about it. All I could think about was Hell blowing up. Like … how even?"

"Indeed." 

"Speaking of Hell, what's it like, anyway?" Linda asks from the kitchen as she pulls a bottle from the fridge. "Ferrying souls."

"Depressing, usually," answers Azrael, not tearing her eyes from Lucifer. "Dead people are stupid shocked, at first. Or terrified. Or both. It sucks having to give the same sorry-you-bit-the-big-one … no-really-you-totes-bit-the-big-one … no- _really_ speech a zillion times a day."

"Who were you surprised went to Hell?" 

"Would you believe Mother Teresa?"

"Whaaat?" says Ella. "No way. Really?"

"Way! Lu probably knows her."

"No _way_ ," Ella repeats, turning to Lucifer expectantly. 

Lucifer's eyes are cloudy and distant, his body hunched. His arms fold across his belly like he's hugging himself underneath. "Rae-Rae, did you ever take Dennis Lawson to the Silver City?" he asks.

"What?" Ella asks. "When did Wedge Antilles die?"

"Not Denis Lawson," says Lucifer. "Dennis Lawson."

"Um …?"

"Who's Dennis Lawson?" Azrael says.

Lucifer re-focuses. "Astoria man. Enjoys camping, jazz, paintball, inane novels, and the occasional glass of single-malt scotch."

"Oh!" Azrael brightens. "Oh, yeah! I remember him. Kept asking if there was scotch in Heaven because he owed you a toast to spite Dad."

"Ah." He exhales, quick and clipped.

"How'd you get him to give up his guilt, anyway? That was fab. I was gonna talk to you about it, but I got pulled away by a prison-bus crash. A whole bakers' dozen of straddlers." 

Lucifer doesn't answer. His eyes are wet when he blinks. He rubs his biceps underneath the blanket like he's chilled.

"I thought I told you about him when you asked," Azrael continues.

"When I asked … what?" He sounds almost numb.

"Um," Chloe says, "maybe we should—"

"You said something like"—Azrael shifts into a deep voice with a badly imitated British accent—"' _Tell me, have you picked up Mr. Lawson?'"—_ and back to her regular speaking voice—"and I said, 'Totes, why?' But you never answered." 

"When," asks Chloe suspiciously, "was this?" 

"What do you mean?" Azrael says.

"Was this in the gap he doesn't remember?"

"No clue; I've got a pretty crappy sense of Earth time—oh, wait!" She snaps her fingers, pointing at Ella. "We had that _Star Trek_ marathon right around then—you said you were super extra bummed or something?"

"Because Lucifer went back to 'England!'" Ella says, bouncing. "Oh, my God, it _was_ in the gap. Months ago. Lucifer, are your memories coming back?"

"Coming?" he says, a soft, bitter laugh smashing like an egg against pavement. "No."

Chloe clenches her coffee cup as an odd feeling takes up residence behind her sternum, like someone took a tuning fork to the bone and struck it. "Lucif—"

"Morning, all," Amenadiel says as he steps into the gap formed by the open slider. He's still wearing the shirt with the bloodstained hole in the chest. They'd had nothing else that would fit—even as buff as Dan is, Amenadiel is much broader in the shoulder blades, and Dan's sweatshirts had been so tight they'd threatened to cut off circulation. He regards everyone sitting at the table, his gaze ticking slowly counterclockwise. He pauses on Chloe for an inordinate march of moments, like he's using her presence to gauge … something. Before he skips onward to, "Luci." 

"Brother," says Lucifer in a strange tone.

"Is everything … okay now?" Amenadiel asks warily, still looking at Lucifer.

"Not really," says Azrael.

"Yeah, Hell is gone," chimes in Ella. 

"Gone?" asks Amenadiel.

"But Lucifer isn't spursed anymore—just amnesiac—so that's good, right?"

"What."

"Here," Ella says, hopping up from her chair. "Sit while we explain, dude. You're gonna need it more than me."

* * *

Ella leans against the slider while Linda paces in the living room, bouncing Charlie on her hip. Lucifer spends most of their explanation staring strangely at nothing, and the dissonance Chloe feels keeps growing, like a bum note gradually replicating through an entire symphony, until, instead of music, all she hears is noise. Meanwhile, Amenadiel accepts things with nothing more than a bit of bafflement. 

"So, two weeks ago, Luci crash landed in your kitchen, naked and compelled," he says slowly. "And, now … Hell is Void."

"Pretty much," says Ella. "Yup."

"Speaking of which, I'd better get going," Azrael says, standing. "See if I can fix this mess with the straddlers." With a shrug of her shoulders, she fans her wings. They're nothing like Lucifer's, instead drab and dreary, smaller, befitting of Death. She inspects herself, preening a little, fixating with a grimace on a blackened bald spot near her elbow. "I … think I can fly? I'm warmed up now."

"Don't rush yourself," cautions Amenadiel.

"Oh, don't be such a worrywart," Azrael counters. "Ells, we still on for _Fringe_ later?"

"If there's no apocalypse, you bet!"

Azrael chuckles, though she seems pale. "There's not gonna be an apocalypse; I promise. Not in any of your lifetimes, anyway."

"So, this is like Heaven's version of climate change?" Ella replies doubtfully. "It's super extra bad, but we'll all be dead before it kills us?" 

"Something like that." Azrael reaches for Lucifer's shoulder. He flinches. A concerned expression blooms on her face. "Take care of yourself, Lu, okay? I got this." 

"Yes," he says, the word soft and clipped. "Good."

"Smell you later, guys!" she says to everybody else. And with a rustle of gray feathers, she's gone. 

Silence stretches as Ella winds around the table, settling into Azrael's old chair. The sounds of distant traffic drift over the fence. She sips from her coffee mug, staring ponderously into space.

"So, am I being too sensitive," Ella says as steam curls lazily from her mug, "or is anyone else totally not reassured right now?" 

"Oh, good, I thought it was just me," says Linda as she walks past the open door.

"Not just you," says Chloe, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"God always has a plan," Amenadiel says serenely. "We just have to have faith."

"Faith." Lucifer scoffs. "You actually think Dad _planned_ for me to-to—I mean, for Hell to revert to Void?"

"It's not for us to know," Amenadiel explains, "but there is a reason, Luci. I know there is. There's a reason for everything."

"Do _you_ have any theories about how Hell exploded?" Ella asks. 

"I don't know," Amenadiel replies. "I was dead."

"So, Hell was still in one piece when you croak—" Ella claps her hands over her mouth. "Wait, sorry," she continues, muffled, before dragging her hands to her chin to speak over the edges of her index fingers. "Is this a sensitive topic? Was it traumatic? Shirt."

"It wasn't traumatic for _me_ , no," Amenadiel says slowly, his gaze lingering on Lucifer. "It didn't hurt. It was so quick I was waking up before I realized what happened, actually."

The dissonance becomes warning bells becomes screaming klaxons in Chloe's mind. 

"How did _that_ happen, anyway?" Ella presses. "Rae-Rae said you had your heart, like, ripped out?" 

"I … did," Amenadiel says, his fingers wandering to the hole in his shirt. He strokes his sternum almost curiously.

What little color had found Lucifer's cheeks drains, leaving a pale pallid sheet, and he starts to rock in his chair. 

Oh. Oh, no.

"Stop," Chloe says, a quiet gasp as dread and realization burgeon. The timeline works out. "Let's not talk about—"

"Is there another Big Bad we gotta worry about?" Ella asks. "Or, was that Lilith, too? Or, like, a demon, or …?"

Amenadiel's face is a grim mask. "Ella, I don't think we should discuss this right now."

"But what kinda monster could even _do_ —" 

"Me," says Lucifer, his voice a soft, sepulchral chill. "I could."

"What? Pffft." Ella waves dismissively at him, making a face. "Nooo, be serious."

"I _am_."

"He didn't do it," Ella insists in a humoring tone, grinning with teeth. "Of _course_ he didn't do it. Amenadiel, tell—"

"It wasn't him," Amenadiel says softly.

"See? Wasn't—"

"He wasn't in his right mind." Ella's mouth falls open, but Amenadiel continues, "I should have known to be cautious the second I saw him, but I wasn't thinking. All I saw was my brother suffering, and I tried to help."

As Chloe's suspicions are confirmed, revulsion crashes through her bloodstream. _I would have done anything—lied, killed, subjugated, worshipped Dad._ He'd said it early on. 

He'd been _forced_.

Nausea coils like wriggling eels in her gut. Grief overflows her eyes. 

Lucifer's body is so rigid the tendons in his neck look like they might snap in two. Fuck. _Fuck_.

Chloe rises slowly from her chair, afraid to spook him. "Lucifer, why don't we go for a walk?" she says thickly. "Or … or something. Let's get some air and talk?"

"She told me to kill anyone who touched me except her," he says in a small, hitching voice. "I didn't want to, but I was _exhausted,_ and—"

"Brother, it wasn't your fault," Amenadiel assures him. "I know that."

Lucifer grips the edge of the table like it's a life raft. There's a snap. Cracks jag through the tempered glass like lightning bolts, spreading outward from his bloodless fingertips. 

"I remember," Lucifer says. "It was me."

His body trembles as the afghan falls away. 

"Lucifer?" Linda calls in a soothing voice, patting the baby's back. "Lucifer, you're in a safe space. Just breathe. Remember how we talked about?"

But he doesn't breathe. 

"All of it was me," he says, a harsh whisper. "It's my fault. _All_ of it."

He peers at each of them, like he's expecting some kind of reaction he isn't getting. 

"What about bed?" Chloe soothes, looming close, but not wanting to risk panicking him further with touch. "Does going back to bed sound good?"

"No, you're not listening to me!" he snaps with sudden severity, slamming his fist on the table. Several coffee mugs splatter.

"What aren't we listening to?" asks Chloe.

"It was _me_."

"We"—Chloe swallows, looking around the table for help—"we understand about Amenadiel. We do. Right?"

Amenadiel and Ella both nod too enthusiastically. 

Lucifer laughs like he hurts—if he doesn't laugh, he'll sob. 

"Lucifer—"

"I did it," he says, "because I didn't want to be there anymore."

"What?" says Chloe. "Where?"

"Hell. I unmade it. Lilith's dead. They're _all_ dead."

Silence stretches.

"Uh, Luci," Amenadiel says, sounding bemused. 

"I said no more," Lucifer adds, his voice a dark, deep abyss, "and the Void answered."

"Maybe Dad helped you?"

"No, Brother," Lucifer continues with an unamused laugh, "I felt it ignite in my chest and split me open. It was like … giving birth, but not to a child. To a reality. A reality where Hell isn't. The same happened when I resurrected you."

"Whoa," says Ella softly.

"But how is that possible?" Amenadiel says. "You're the Lightbringer; you're not—"

"God?" Lucifer snaps. "Yes, I bloody _know_."

He clutches his shaking hands to his chest. He looks at Chloe like she's the only bright spot in a spiraling maw of dark. And then he flees. At human speed. Bumping blindly past Linda and weaving toward the front door. Like his brain suddenly disconnected from his body—he just needs to get out, get out, get out, and in the absence of thought, his limbs are reacting for him.

Her heart aches like someone crammed it into a vacuum sealer. 

"I'm just"—she jabs her thumb shakily in the direction he fled—"I'm gonna see if I can catch up with him. Just … be there. Okay?"

She doesn't wait for an answer before she chases after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to leave comments or kudos! And to my lurkers, thank you, too :)


	48. "fire poppies to bloom"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you profusely to anyone who takes the time to leave a comment or kudos :)

He hasn't run far. She finds him in the quad outside her apartment, sitting on the bench by the nearest planter. Sunlight slants onto him, washing out his features. The lush flowers and greenery towering behind him strike her oddly, like … the Devil. In the Garden. 

Where he's actually been before.

The unexpected imagery is enough to grind her to a halt halfway out the complex's front door. Cool morning air buffets her, rushing into the building through the gap she's given it. He doesn't look up. Doesn't even seem to notice her. He cups his hands together, gazing into the shallow bowl formed by his shaking palms.

The idea this man—this gentle fastidious favor-hoarding hyperactive hedonist—could have destroyed an entire dimension by wishing it gone is … difficult to fathom. But the difficult part where her reality shifts to incorporate the fantastical is already done. 

She'd had coffee with the Angel of Death earlier. Three archangels had slept in her apartment last night. The Mother of Demons had compelled the Devil to be Chloe's slave. A warlock exorcist had tried to help them fix it, after her demon roommate had tracked him down and kidnapped him. Lucifer the Morning Star is her lover, her teammate, her partner and dearest friend. 

If that mountainous pile of fiction is real, what can't be? Her mind contorting to add bullet points to the list of possibilities doesn't feel like contortion anymore, so much as gentle flexing.

Hell is destructible.

Check.

The Devil destroyed it.

Check.

With the power of thought.

Check.

Now, what?

Gathering herself, she closes the gap between them. His body is a long, warm line against her arm and ribs as she settles beside him. She rests her cheek against his shoulder, watching his hands, still cupped.

A minute passes in silence.

"It," he says with a hint of frustration, "doesn't seem to work here." 

"What doesn't?" she asks.

"I was attempting to make a coin." 

"A coin?"

"Yes, the kind you buy things with?" He forms fists with his hands, then spreads them into a bowl shape again, but nothing happens. "Perhaps, only in Hell, or … perhaps … perhaps there are conditions."

"Conditions for what?"

"Making things happen. Perhaps that's why I took so long to … to …." He trails away, rocking in place as he flips his palms and idly rubs his thighs. The nervous tic. Back again. His expression twists. "Look at me. I've killed everyone, yet all I can wonder is why I didn't do it sooner." He scoffs, glancing sidelong at her. "You must find it appalling."

Appalling, yes. Nightmarish. 

But not for the reasons he's implying.

She's seen self-recrimination and doubt all too often in the aftermath of abuse. Seeing them sprouting like weeds in his heart makes her ache. "Lucifer, you were in an abominable situation. Please, don't blame yourself—not for any of it." She grabs his hands, squeezing them. "Unless you think you can rewrite time, too."

"Amenadiel, perhaps, before he fell. Not I."

"Then what we have is what we have—it's not your fault you were hurt; it's Lilith's. The person who _actually hurt_ you."

"You don't believe me, do you?" he says, staring like he's watching the world end where their palms meet. "You don't believe I did it."

"Of _course_ I believe you. I believe whatever you say."

He snatches away to scrub at his face. "The Void is full of bodies and bits. Dead demons and other denizens. Loose souls. I unmade Hell, not the things that lived— _what_?" He snaps the last word through his palms, glaring over the tips of his fingers.

A woman and a sevenish-year-old girl walk past. Well, the woman is pushing more than walking, her hands cupped over the girl's ears, a scandalized expression sharpening her features. Chloe recognizes them as neighbors, but doesn't know their names.

"Hi, Lucifer!" chirps the girl, grinning and waving despite being frogmarched. 

"Hello," Chloe says, smiling awkwardly. "How are you?"

The woman huffs, redoubling her efforts to push her daughter out of hearing range.

"Yes, yes," Lucifer blusters, "the Devil in a bathrobe. Gawk if you must."

"What's gawk mean?" asks the girl.

"Shh!" scolds the woman. "I _told_ you _not_ to talk to him."

The girl starts to cry as the woman shoves her through the front doors and around the corner, Lucifer glaring darkly after them.

"I think," Chloe hazards, "she was balking at the subject matter, not your bathrobe." Bodies and bits. Demons. Not exactly appropriate material for a seven-year-old. "Maybe, we should go somewhere away from foot traffic?"

But Lucifer doesn't budge, instead peering at the now empty doorway, his eyes glistening. He rubs his hands along his biceps like he's cold. "Detective, in escaping, I've committed genocide. I've destroyed a fundamental part of the afterlife. I've endangered countless humans—ensured anyone who dies with a conflicted heart will suffer without reprieve. How can you say it's not my fault unless you believe me to be telling fiction?"

"Because it's not that simple."

"Isn't it?"

She tips her knee onto the bench, turning to fully face him, though he remains closed off, staring into space. "Why?" she asks.

"Why what?"

"Why did you do what you did?"

"Because"—he searches without finding as his expression collapses, his lips trembling into a stressed, disturbed grimace—"because I couldn't take it anymore." His voice cracks. "I was dying. Drowning, Detective. I …."

_Déjà vu_ sweeps in on a dark, dread tide.

_Chloe, it's like dying,_ he'd said. _Like slipping into an undertow._

She reaches for him, telegraphing her intent. He flinches away. She doesn't push, instead holding up her hands as she inches backward. "Lilith," she says gently, "forced you to feel something you didn't want?" 

His silence speaks for him. 

"Lucifer, that's self-defense. Saving yourself from death."

"I wasn't _actually_ dying," he grouses, the words weighted with recrimination.

"But you felt like it, yeah?" He squeezes his eyes shut. "You're trying retrospectively to view this through a rational, informed lens, but I _know_ you, Lucifer _._ If you'd been rational—if you'd been aware your destructive wishes weren't idle—we wouldn't be having this conversation. You'd be _gone_." Dead, his mind warped into being someone else, his body still trapped in Lilith's clutches. "So, no. I don't blame you. Not even a little."

"Detective …."

"If anything, I'm _grateful_." Her eyes water. "Maybe, that's selfish, but I don't care anymore." From what he's said, Hell had had no redeeming features, and having met Bakasura vicariously, she doesn't think the demons are any great loss, either. Maze is an exceptional exception. "I'm just glad you saved yourself."

"But," he flounders, "I could have done something sooner. Something less drastic. If only I'd known I could—"

"Maybe you _couldn't_ ," she challenges. "Maybe the current scope of your power is brand new. What's the use in playing coulda, woulda, shoulda when you don't have all the facts?"

He rises. His slippers clap against the boardwalk as he paces. "I wanted a bloody piano," he says, counting off on his hand, "and the exact piano I desired appeared. I wanted scotch, and, lo, there was my favorite bloody Bowmore." He raises a second finger. "I was thinking of our kiss on the beach, and the ash turned to sand. Then I only wanted to be clean, and the sand was gone as well." A third and fourth finger go up. "I had a whole big bloody pile of hints _screaming_ at me, and she still won. She—"

"Lilith did _not_ win, Lucifer," Chloe insists, rising to meet him. "She did _not_. You survived, and she didn't. That's the important takeaway here. Okay?" 

He jars to a halt when his frothing path threatens collision with her. "Detective, I …."

She grips his hands between their bodies. "Lucifer, willing a piano or a drink into existence is infinitesimal compared to literally destroying a reality." She squints. "Or, I mean, so I would assume. So, you just"—she tightens her grip, as if she could press sense into his clammy cold lifelines by force—"you cannot get wrapped up in blaming yourself for not doing something you're not even sure you could have done before you actually did it."

"But I could have at least incapacitated her with a bloody falling stalactite or—"

"I thought you said she was immortal."

"She _was_."

"And _you_ were initially compelled to attend to me for a rumbly stomach," she counters. "For shivering. For being upset. For shedding a single freaking _tear_. Don't you think the second you dropped the ceiling on her, you would've been compelled to remove it? Maybe even bring her a cup of Hell tea and a Band-Aid for your trouble?"

"Oh," he says, sucking in a sharp, grieving breath, as he's knocked out of his tailspin. _Finally_. 

She releases his hands to push her fingers through his hair, stroking down his neck on both sides. "Maybe the way things happened is exactly what you needed to escape. You just … you don't know. And you cannot beat yourself up. You can't. So, I'm begging you, _please_ , don't blame yourself, yeah?" This is victimization 101 stuff, and he needs to hear it. Repeatedly, until it sticks. "This is not. Your. Fault. Not what you did, and not what you didn't do."

His gaze shifts over her shoulder for a moment, distant, glassy. She clutches his collarbones, hoping to ground him, keep him in the conversation now, instead of letting him drift into the trauma of remembered thens. 

"I'm here," she soothes. 

He curls his hands back to rest his palms over hers. His fingers twitch. His grip tightens. And then he's clinging like she's the only thing keeping him upright.

"I spoke to Raguel and Gabriel," he says with a bitter edge sharpening his lament. "I saw the Silver City for the first time since Falling. I saw my brothers and sisters gathered, panicking. They blamed me for not helping sooner."

Rage boils in her gut. "Did they not know you were—"

"Enslaved? No. But they didn't care." He laughs morosely. "Somehow, I'd always thought I'd reconcile some day. I'd always thought there'd be a bloody point when they—when _Dad_ —decided I'd paid enough for my sins. I'd always hoped. Silly of me; I know."

"It's not silly to want your family to love and accept you."

The breeze billows, ruffling his disheveled hair and the hemline of his robe. "Detective, what if this is why I Fell?"

"I'm … not following."

"Clearly, my memory's not infallible as I'd thought. I've always remembered my Fall being about desiring freedom. But what if the problem was I already had too much? Perhaps I destroyed something I shouldn't have. Burned it to ash with a misplaced wish, just like—"

"Hey," she says, interrupting him, "hey, hey." She grabs the silk lapels of his robe. God, she wants to hug him, but— 

"What if I _am_ evil?" Lucifer asks. "Of course they would reject me."

She thinks of forest fires—a California staple—incinerating old growth, clearing the way for rebirth. Wildflowers explode across the landscape the growing season after a burn. "Destruction isn't evil, Lucifer. It's all in how it's used or not. And you can build things, too. Beautiful things. You saved Amenadiel."

"I _killed_ Amenadiel."

"But he's alive."

"That doesn't mean I didn't—"

She gasps as thoughts and ideas connect, blooming like a riotous swath of fire poppies.

"What?" he asks as another boggled neighbor passes.

Grabbing Lucifer's wrist, she tugs him away from the center walk. He follows, until they're perched on the dry, grassy strip between the sidewalk and the curb, close to where her car is parked under the frugal shade of a single palm tree, far from the trickle of comers and goers. 

"Can you resurrect a demon like you resurrected your brother?" she asks in a low whisper.

A pause. "They've … no souls," he considers eventually, frowning."I've no idea?"

"So maybe you didn't destroy anything yet," she enthuses.

"What, you think I can resurrect them all?"

"Why not?"

"But—"

"I mean it," she says, crashing over his objection. "Maybe, you didn't destroy _anything_. Maybe you're inviting the fire poppies to bloom."

Confusion twists his expression. 

"Like forest fires," she continues, almost vibrating. "Everything got tangled and overgrown. You can always replant the parts you liked, but now you've cleared the field for something new. Something … something better?" 

"But, Detective, this would be," he protests, "a _lot_ of bloody flowers."

She almost laughs. It's gratifying, at least, to know the Devil himself seems to be having problems grasping the scale of what he's done. What he's capable of. "Lucifer, if you can will an entire universe from existence—if you can will Amenadiel back to life—why the hell not?"

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Then sinks against the vehicle behind them—not hers—the red Beetle her left-hand neighbor drives. His weight warps the fiberglass enough to make it pop at them. The car dips toward the curbside. 

"I … am the Will," he says.

"What?" she asks.

"I am the Will."

"What does that mean?"

He shakes his head. "I … feel as though I've said it before. Or perhaps been told?"

"When?"

"I don't remember. I've … no recollection." He clutches his temples, squinting, like he's trying to think but thinking hurts. An SUV swishes past, the backdraft a cool breath against her face. "But … I am the Will."

_Something primordial._

_What I always should have been._

_Becoming._

Maybe he's fulfilling a birthright he doesn't remember having. Maybe. The idea he has a higher purpose—a destiny far beyond the boundaries of her small life in her small apartment makes painful sense. He's the _Devil,_ after all. The Lightbringer. The brightest archangel. 

He's mythic. 

Even if he is the guy who boops her with his ice-cream cones.

Her heart shreds as the path lays itself out. 

"Look, you said it yourself," she continues around the sudden lump in her throat. "It seems like you can birth new realities." She steps closer, holding out her arms. This time, he welcomes her, his hands finding the small of her back and clasping over her spine. "So … why not birth a reality where Hell _is_ , only better? Exactly how _you_ want it? You're not evil, Lucifer. You're _change_."

He doesn't speak. As if her speculation knocked him off his axis. But her idea makes sense. She knows it does. Out with the gnarled, snarled mess Hell had become. In with fresh green shoots of new ideas, acquired through Lucifer's unique life trajectory. 

"Creation is … considerably more difficult than Destruction," he muses, hesitant excitement tingeing his tone. "Resurrecting Amenadiel felt commensurate with turning Hell itself to dust." 

She's still a handful of thoughts ahead of him. He might be brilliant, but he's working off trauma, and injury, and a heap of shellshocked realizations. Meanwhile, deductive reasoning is how she makes her living. 

But he'll get there. 

To the part making her feel stuck in free fall. 

"You really think I can?" he asks in a soft voice. "Rebuild Hell? Change it for the better?"

"I bet you can make something beautiful. Just like the poppies." She tightens her embrace for emphasis, recalling the times he's griped about Hell's poor design, the times he's lamented his conscription into a system he loathes. "Something that takes your vast life experience and _uses it_." 

He swallows. "I used to think it was just. Fair. People _should_ burn for their mistakes."

When they'd first met, he'd been about the chase, and the punishment. "I remember."

"I thought _I_ should burn, until Dad was pleased again, but … he was _never_ pleased."

She sniffs, reaching to stroke his face. "I know."

"I gave up, eventually. Rebelled again, eventually. And then … I met you." He cups her chin, staring into her soul with eyes like obsidian traps. "You made me want to change."

"And you did. I've _seen_ it. The Lucifer I met four years ago _never_ would have returned to Hell to protect us measly humans."

He brushes his thumb over the ridge of her cheek, smiling sadly. "Devil's Advocate today?"

"Always, Lucifer. I'm _always_ your advocate."

She rises to her tiptoes to kiss him. At first, the press of her mouth to his is chaste. But then his lips part, inviting her inside. He tastes of scotch—smoke and peat and spices. His hand snakes around her neck, clutching at the nape, and he pulls her closer, desperate, searching. Her lower body tightens like guitar strings as the tuning pegs are twisted. She's dizzy and wanting when they part to catch their breaths. 

"I don't think it's ever too late to do the right thing," she says, panting. "To make a difference. I don't, Lucifer."

"You've said that before." 

The wetness in his eyes overflows. One—two—glistening tracks chase down his cheeks. She kisses both salt trails in slow succession. "Be the change you want to see," she murmurs. "Be _change_."

"Even if it means I'm apart from you?" he asks, and her stomach swoops. 

She knew he'd get there eventually. Building a brand new Hell—like any new government—is an enormous project. Not a one-off he can poof into existence, say, "Bob's your uncle!" and then leave. Of course he'll want to see this through. 

The symmetry is too perfect. 

Maybe, this was God's stupid Plan all along.

"Of course I want you to stay with me," she says, trying and failing to fight back tears. "Of _course_ I do." The lump in her throat hurts like she swallowed tacks. "But I'm an adult, Lucifer. I know there's a bigger picture than just you and me. Love isn't always enough." 

He presses his forehead against hers. "I do. Love you, Det—Chloe." He says her name like a prayer for the dying. A last rite. " _Chloe_. Very much, I do." 

"I love you, too," she replies with equal weight. She hugs him as tightly as her arms will grasp. "I'm glad you came back, even just for a little while."

"Closure."

"Yeah. Closure." Her voice rasps. "It's nice to have." 

"Are you telling me," he asks softly, "you're satisfied?" 

"Of _course_ I'm not—" _I won't leave for good without giving you time to speak to me,_ he'd said. _I won't leave you until you're satisfied there's no other solution._ "Oh." The conversation had crept up. Their _last_ conversation. "I mean, yes, I … I understand why you need to go." 

Blinking slowly, he sags against her—almost swoons—only steadying himself at the precipice of collapse. 

"Lucifer?"

"I am," he admits, "knackered. I …."

She hugs him. "Giving birth takes it out of you."

He snorts—the debilitated hint of mirth—and kisses her. "You would know, I suppose."

"Sorry, if I don't laugh about something, I'm seriously gonna cry." She wipes at her face. "I mean … way more than I already am." Ugly crying. Complete with snot, drool, and salt-scratched, blushing skin.

"If … you'd like to cry, I …." He clings. "Really, it's all right. The least I can do." 

No. No, she'll save her grief for later, when the clock isn't ticking down. "Will you just hold me for a while?" 

"Of course," he says, nuzzling her. "Hold me as well?"

"Yeah." A too short, long goodbye. "Yeah, I'd like that." 

She'll make each moment count. 

* * *

In her bedroom, they cuddle, listening to the birdsongs, breeze, susurrating palm fronds, and distant swish of passing traffic, until the hooks of his exhaustion dig deep into muscle and bone and thought. His dark eyes, fixated warmly on hers, drop to half-mast, and then close. His grip relaxes. His breaths even out. 

She remains, watching him, memorizing his face—every feature from his sharp Roman nose, to his long eyelashes, to the bristly brush of black sideburns pointing toward his jaw. Time stretches. She wants to stay with him until he goes, whether or not he's awake. 

Eventually, though, her bladder objects. So does her stomach. She slogs into the kitchen around 3 p.m., annoyed at her human needs, but unable to silence them.

Linda and Ella sit with the baby, gabbing softly as they watch television. Amenadiel hovers by Chloe's fancy new Lucifer-funded coffee maker, sipping idly at her "World's Greatest Detective" mug. Steam curls against his lower lip as he slurps. The bitter aroma of the Blonde Roast Azrael had complimented lingers.

"Chloe," Amenadiel murmurs as she grabs the last donut—a powdered jelly-filled—from the box Ella had brought the day before, "how are you?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" He had just died, after all.

The babble of the television fills the quiet. Chloe recognizes the cherubic hints of dialogue, even before Ella exclaims, "Moon Dancer is my favorite. I wish she'd show up more."

"She's not usually on?" asks Linda, frowning at the screen like it's a petri dish full of funny fluid samples. 

"Nah," replies Ella as Charlie grasps with little fingers toward the screen, "she's nearly a one-off, but—"

"I'm fine," Amenadiel assures, smiling warmly over the lip of his mug at the soft spectacle in the living room. "Still marveling at how big Charlie's gotten. But fine."

"I'm fine, too," Chloe says.

He sets his cup onto the counter, folding his arms. "Are you?"

She bites into the donut, cloying sweetness sticking to her tongue, and chews. And chews. When she swallows, the coagulating ball stutters down her throat like caked sawdust covered in jam. "No," she confesses softly. 

"Thought so."

God, she hates jelly donuts.

The baseboards under her broken floor tiles groan with his weight as he shifts closer, a solid, supporting presence. Hot needles of jealousy jab her heart. Why doesn't Linda have to endure this shit? Why doesn't _Amenadiel_ have to go? But that's ridiculous, of course. Linda _has_ endured this shit, for the five months her child's father had been gone. 

"I'm," Chloe says, "trying to wrap my head around this stuff." For Lucifer, in particular. He doesn't need weepy, clingy Chloe right now. "Really, I am, but …."

Amenadiel laughs softly. "Lucifer willing Hell out of existence is a bit much, isn't it?"

" _No_ ," she says, frowning, and he stills. "More, I'm just … making peace with the fact he has things to do. Big things. Things that aren't here. Or"—the ugly crying she'd tried to stifle before threatens like an avalanche, a rumble echoing through barren snow-tipped mountains—"or with me."

"Chloe."

"I mean, fuck," she continues, "I should've had it figured from the beginning, don't you think? An immortal party-hearty archangel who avoids children isn't exactly single human homebody mom material."

"Well," Amenadiel says, "he is famous for defying expectations, you know."

He means to be supportive. She's sure of it. But his words make the abiding ache in her chest burgeon into briary, constricting tangles. Because it's true. Lucifer has defied almost _every_ expectation. He isn't who he was—he's _so_ much more. And she's proud of him. _Except he's always leaving her,_ her small voice adds. He'll never defy that expectation—not once—not through fault of his own anymore, but that's just the cherry topping for the crap cake. The stupidly un-ironic "irony" Alanis sings about.

God, damn it.

She discards the flaccid powdered donut and runs her hands under the faucet, washing away the sugar caking her fingertips. "Did you," she asks as the water rushes, "even have an _inkling_ he could …?"

"Will things to happen?" Amenadiel finishes for her. "Other than light, no. I didn't."

She twists the knob, turning off the flow. "He didn't do it before he Fell?"

"Chloe, that was a long time ago."

She wipes her hands on the towel. "So, you don't remember it either?" 

"I not sure any of us do."

Hugging herself, she folds her arms across her chest. "Lucifer's always said his memory is eidetic."

"Maybe it was, until it wasn't." _Thanks to visceral, repeated trauma_ , Amenadiel doesn't need to add, and the briar tangle around her heart tightens like God pulled the slack from each root. "But strength of memory is individual, not angelic." Amenadiel leans back against the counter. "I remember … Michael telling us Lucifer had incited rebellion."

"What kind of rebellion?"

"There was a war when we tried to subdue him."

"But _before_ the war? What was the incitement?"

Amenadiel can't answer.

"What did Lucifer say in his defense?" she asks.

Amenadiel squints at nothing, clearly grasping for memories loitering on the liminal edge between recollection and dissolution. "I," he says slowly, "don't know that we gave him a chance to speak."

"But the Fall didn't have to do with him making things, right?" she presses, suddenly desperate. "Or destroying them?"

"No idea, Chloe. I'm sorry."

"Why wouldn't you let Lucifer defend himself?" 

"The Sword was infallible," Amenadiel says. 

"Michael, you mean."

"Yes. Why would he lie?" His distant gaze focuses back onto her. "Or so we thought at the time. He's gone now."

"Gone?"

"He left after the Fall," Amenadiel says. "None of us know where he is."

"That's …." Suspect. 

This whole fucking mess is suspect, with probable cause for arrest.

She stares forlornly at the trashcan housing her dead donut. Maybe, these are answers they'll never have. Not unless God gets a lot more chatty. 

"For what it's worth," Amenadiel says, "I regret my part." 

She looks up. "In what?"

Charlie giggles, a high-pitched shriek that pierces her ears like only children can. Amenadiel's gaze follows the commotion. Blowing raspberries, Ella is bouncing the baby on her knee. 

"Lucifer is my brother," Amenadiel says, deep and overwrought. "My only sibling who truly gets this place. Earth. How _wonderful_ humanity can be." He beams at the scene on her sofa like Lucifer sometimes smiles at Chloe—twitterpated and full of bewildered awe. "I regret I took so long to see."

"Lucifer?" she asks. "Or Earth?"

"Both."

Her eyes prickle, and she blinks furiously. "You should tell him that. I think he really needs to hear it."

"I will. And Chloe?"

"What?"

"Everything will be okay. I promise."

Faith bleeds by the bucketful from his words, but she can't share in his credence. She sighs, turning away. Her stomach, at least, isn't churning with hunger anymore, only angst and despair. She glances at the clock. 3:17 p.m. How had seventeen minutes passed, already? 

Lucifer's still asleep when she returns to the bedroom. The sinking sun stretches the shadows. She takes a picture of him with her phone. Just … for reasons. Then she climbs back into bed.

* * *

His goodbye is quiet and quick, like a cat slinking along the edges of a room. She wakes to the press of his lips on her forehead. Midnight hues darken the space.

"I promise, darling," he whispers, brushing his fingers through her hair, "I'll return if I'm able. If it's … if it's feasible. Somehow. I swear." _But don't wait up,_ he doesn't add _._

"Okay," she says, the word thick with a threatening deluge. "Okay, I love you."

"And I you," he says easily.

He rolls his shoulders. The warm glow of his wings eclipses the dark, squeezes her hurting heart. He's wearing a crisp black suit with a red pocket square, and his hair is coiffed, his stubble expertly cultivated. He lingers, and she tries to memorize him again. She'd hoped he'd wait for breakfast, but … she can also understand wanting to rip off the Band-Aid.

"Go plant some poppies, Lucifer," she encourages, the words breaking. "Make it beautiful."

He nods, his lips a stretched, thin grimace. "Goodbye."

"Bye," she hiccups.

Disquiet fills the space between them. She's afraid to move. To breathe. 

And then he's gone.

The clock reads 4:13 a.m.

Which makes it Monday.

She calls in sick for work, pulls a pillow over her head, and hugs the phone with his picture to her chest. Cold comfort, but—

A soft knock at her door makes her flinch.

"Hey," says Ella, peeking inside, "Lucifer said you might need a fr—" Something awful must show on Chloe's face, even in the welcome dark. "Oh. Oh, Chlo. I'm so sorry."

The mattress jostles as Ella joins her, pulling her into a tight embrace. She doesn't fill the space where Lucifer had been. Nothing will. But Chloe appreciates the sentiment, at least. 

"Thanks," she rasps.

"Sure."

Grief blurs the hours after that.


	49. "Bitter yearning"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, this was written before 5A. Got a big old cackling laugh when I watched ¡Diablo!

Breathing hurts.

The gate into the Void hovers over the surf, several Lux lengths toward the horizon.

His chest and belly, tight and constricted like he's caught in a compactor, don't seem to want to let his lungs inflate. Seawater slurps at his feet, spilling into his shoes as waves break onto moonlit sand. 

He wishes he'd never started caring. 

Except if he'd never cared, he wouldn't love the Detective—all his friends—and his life would be poorer for it. His life _was_ poorer before. He can admit that much, at least, in retrospect. 

He's certain Dr. Linda would say, "Yes, Lucifer, that's what being 'good' is. Desiring things with all your heart, yet still being willing to give them up for the sake of others."

"Well, it's bollocks, if you ask me," he mutters, glaring at the sky he'd painted with stars. "Yes, yes, I bet you're laughing now." How _dare_ you, he doesn't add. Doesn't have the spirit anymore.

He's just … old. And tired.

He rubs his eyes, breathing in the smells, hearing the sounds, relishing the feel of this place.

Home.

The ocean stretches into infinity like a crinkled foil sheet, the full moon painting the water in silver hues. Chill air slaps his face, filling his nose with salt scent. The beach is empty and quiet, no bonfires burning—not even locals visit this early, not in November. 

"Need a hand?" Amenadiel murmurs beside him as he folds his slate-gray wings away.

Lucifer's heart kicks like a runaway drum, but he manages not to jump. "Brother," he grits out, "come to gloat?"

"Thought you could use some moral support."

"Because that worked so bloody well for you before." His mind veers into memory—hard gristle and soft sinew caught between his teeth. The lurid, loathly image hijacks him for a breath, but then a welcome wall slams down. 

He stuffs his hands into his trouser pockets to hide the telltale trembling before turning to face his brother. Amenadiel's cross trainers score the wet sand with fresh prints. He's replaced his bloodstained t-shirt with some fleece Fruit-of-the-Loom atrocity. His jeans are new as well.

"Did you rob a Walmart on your way here?" Lucifer knows what's inside those places now.

"Luci, I don't blame you," Amenadiel says as the wind buffets them. "For what happened to me. I don't."

"Well"—Lucifer snorts derisively—"that's _definitely_ a change in tune from the usual, isn't it?"

"You're deflecting."

"Oh? And what does Dr. Amenadiel prescribe for his evil little brother today?"

A pause, as Amenadiel pulls up his red hoodie and ties the strings beneath his chin. 

"You look bloody ridiculous," adds Lucifer.

"Luci, I get you're scared. Angry. Maybe even jealous."

A hot needle of irritation bisects some of his inner ice. " _Jealous_? What, of _you_?" Getting to stay. Getting to _love_. Getting to have all the bloody things Lucifer desired despite, until only recently, having proclaimed them wrong for angels to want.

"I would be jealous," Amenadiel admits. 

"Yes, well, that's you." As always. "Not me."

"Hey." Amenadiel holds up his hands in a placating gesture. "I'm just saying I get it."

"Do you."

"I do. And I'm here." His shoulders straighten, his spine lengthening into a ramrod, proud posture. The red point of his hoodie's hood makes him look like an oversized garden gnome. "You're my brother, and I want to help. Okay?"

"How _beneficent_ of you," Lucifer almost snarls.

"Luci."

" _What_!"

A warm hand gently cups Lucifer's shoulder. Squeezes. "I'm sorry it took me so long to see you."

"You were dead."

"Before that."

"Stop speaking in riddles, will you?" Lucifer snaps, liberating a hand from his pocket to rub the bridge of his nose. "I've a bloody headache already."

"I'm saying … you were right."

He gapes around his palm. "I'm sorry, _what_?"

"You were right," Amenadiel says, "and I was wrong. Wanting to live your own life isn't evil. It's just … human. And that's beautiful." 

"Oh, stop. You're making me blush."

"Deflecting again."

Lucifer rolls his eyes. "Better than fraternal flirting. This isn't an episode of _Supernatural_."

"Love you, too, brother," Amenadiel replies warmly, but his affection only hurts. Burns.

Why _now_? 

Why must the pieces fit _now_ , just before it's time to re-jumble them into the bloody puzzle box.

Lucifer peers over the waves, vision blurring, stomach churning. The ocean froths, choppy like his thoughts, shock-white slivers of foam striating the silver. He clenches his fists, but his grip has become like water—fluid, unable to hold solid form. 

"Brother, I don't want to go," he admits quietly. "I want to be _here_. Why can't I have one small thing? Fifty, sixty years. It's a drop in the bucket of time."

"You could stay," says Amenadiel.

"No, I can't. I _can't._ "

"Luci, this problem doesn't need immediate fixing. Rae-Rae will clean up the straddlers, just as she promised. And you're right—Chloe's life is a drop in the bucket. No one would think less of you for taking time for yourself."

An awful, hurting laugh barks from Lucifer's lips. "Excuse me, have you even _met_ our family?"

"I meant the people here. On Earth."

" _I'm_ here," Lucifer says, looking at his feet. Clumps of sand stick to his shoes. " _She's_ here." The compactor crushing his chest squeezes tighter and tighter. "Don't you understand? Living here has made me care." Perhaps the Detective _is_ Persephone of a sort, fostering growth. "How can I, in good conscience, take timefor myself—knowing the afterlife is broken _,_ knowing souls are flailing and irretrievable in the Void, knowing I've slaughteredcountless demons—all while I've the power to fix it?"

"Dad could fix it, too."

"But he hasn't. Which leaves _me_."

Amenadiel doesn't speak, for once seemingly at a loss. Lucifer clears his throat roughly, almost outright coughing as he turns away. The crack and crash of breaking waves—the slurp and suck of water—fills the silence. There's no use wallowing. Or lingering. The longer he lingers, the more he bloody hurts. With a wet, bubbly sniff, he brushes imaginary lint from his sleeves.

"Yes, well," he begins, forcefully clearing his throat again when his voice cracks, "you can't seriously expect to go into Void like this. I've only just resurrected you. Have you even got all your stuffing back?"

"I'll be okay for a little while," Amenadiel replies. "You'll be there."

"Please, don't tell me we have to hold hands."

"I'm a big boy. I think I'll manage."

"You didn't last time."

"Luci, I was dead."

"My point," he snarks, not quite under his breath, and Amenadiel gives him a suffering look. Lucifer sighs. "Expect a drop. This isn't like jumping into Hell—there are no Cardinal directions to catch you."

"Got it."

"It's cold," he warns, "and dark. Your feathers will molt."

"I know," replies Amenadiel patiently. "I was just there with you, remember?"

"Yes, and I was the one carrying _you_ like a bloody baby this time!"

A wan smile quivers onto Amenadiel's face. "I thought you'd be pleased for the karmic _quid pro quo_."

"Hardly."

Amenadiel folds his arms in a vaguely Superman pose. "So, are we gonna go?"

Lucifer peers tiredly at the gate. "Come on, then."

* * *

Even prepared, they spill into the Void like pinballs dumped down a chute into a brumal black hole. Grappling at each other, feathers tangling, they find a unified, stabilized perspective from which to observe the directionless, disorientating Nothing. No fog of frozen breath collects at their lips beyond the first forced exhalation. There is no air to breathe, no moisture to freeze. 

Amenadiel shivers, staring wide-eyed at the inky expanse. In the distance float demons and other bits. Everywhere. Perished without air or heat. Flesh-sicles of bone and blood in the frigid dark. As well, howling, agonized souls, all ripped from a reality they can process and plunged into emptiness. They glow with the light Lucifer had brought, though softer; almost re-extinguished as the darkness consumes like a glutting beast. 

Amenadiel probably hadn't seen this horror when he'd been freshly resurrected. 

"See you now why I cannot leave this for later?" Lucifer asks. 

"They're suffering," replies Amenadiel in a grave tone.

"Yes. They are. Deeply." 

And even if these souls are damned, they don't deserve an eternity of pain without opportunity to change their circumstances. Forever is a _long_ bloody time. Thanks to Eve, he suspects Heaven is as deeply flawed by timelessness as Hell was, but … that's neither here nor there. 

Here and there is Hell. Hell is his. And Hell is what he can fix.

In theory.

Now, what?

"How can I help?" asks Amenadiel. 

"Well, I'm not a bloody expert," Lucifer huffs. The compulsion had connected him with his power, but it hadn't given him context or instruction manuals. "I'm not even certain I can engage my Will voluntarily." What irony.

"You weren't compelled to resurrect me," Amenadiel says. 

"True." Lucifer thinks of the piano. Of the scotch. Of the sand replacing ash. Even the destruction of Hell itself wasn't coerced, though certainly affected by duress. "I think I did it several times before Lilith as well."

"You only think?" Amenadiel's wings flap awkwardly, like a human trying to balance as he treks across treacherous ice. "I thought you said it hurt."

"It didwhen Lilith forcedme." Also when Lucifer had disintegrated Hell. And when he'd denied death from Amenadiel. "Though, that's a semi-decent point." Perhaps pain's absence is why Lucifer hadn't recognized the so-called obvious. Small-scale editing done without resistance doesn't cost much, in the grand scheme?

He cups his palms together, holding them in front of his chest, focusing on the creases of his lifelines. He desires a coin. A Pentecostal Coin. He brings the thought—an unnaturally glowing gold disc—to his mind's eye. 

A glaring Baphomet framed by a pentagram engraves the front, each point of the star labeled with an aspect: Beelzebub, Dragon, Satan, Lucifer, Serpent. The words "IN GOD WE'RE DAMNED" sprawl across the top, and on the bottom "MORNING STAR." On the back, Jesus in a crucifix pose, his body enclosed by a triangle, each point, too, labeled with an aspect: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The words "IN GOD WE TRUST" mark the top. The bottom, again "MORNING STAR." 

He thinks of every curve and line. He thinks of the duality: Devil versus God. He thinks—

"What are you doing?" Amenadiel asks.

Glaring over his shoulder, Lucifer expels his irritation in a gust. "I was attempting to make a coin."

"A coin?"

"Yes, the kind you buy things with?" 

"You looked constipated."

"Oh, shut it." Arse. " _You_ try playing Dad. You certainly act the part occasionally."

"Just trying to lighten the mood."

"Kind of impossible at the moment, don't you think?" Lucifer gestures sharply at the Void around them. 

Amenadiel deflates. "Sorry."

"I've no idea why it isn't working. I thought perhaps I was limited to exercising my Will in Hell, but … here we are in the space Hell used to bloody be, and _nothing is bloody happening."_

"Maybe that's the problem. This technically isn't Hell."

"Dad, I hope not. We're buggered, if so—not in the fun way."

Souls spark dimly in the distance like a congregation of fireflies. The sight would be beautiful away from context. The pit in Lucifer's stomach grows.

"Was there a feeling that united all these separate instances of Will?" Amenadiel asks.

"Speak plainly, brother," Lucifer reminds through clenched teeth. 

"I'm just asking, was there a common emotional thread each time you did this voluntarily? Maybe, it's like the flaming sword—you need to connect with a specific sentiment to be successful."

Hmm. "Perhaps," Lucifer allows.

"So, what made you resurrect me?"

"Desire. For you not to be dead."

"Desire's the nature of free will—choosing how to react to your surroundings rather than being pulled along by fate. But … what else? What specifically?" Amenadiel inches closer, staring intently. "Think,brother."

"I _am_ thinking," Lucifer grouses.

_Well, think harder,_ Amenadiel doesn't need to say. Instead, he folds his arms over his chest, wobbling a little. 

Lucifer rewinds his mind's eye to Amenadiel, dead. Motionless and frozen. His heart ripped from his body. A pervasive, gnawing grief had boiled in Lucifer. Then he'd bubbled into denial. Rage. 

_I am sick and bloody tired of people telling me how things will be and what I must do! I am sick of being punished. I am sick of being a slave!_

Denial and rage fit with his destruction of Hell as well. But how do they connect to a painlessly produced piano? Or a bottle of scotch? Or … or _sand_?

For that, he'd been thinking of kissing the Detective on the beach. Even in Hell, a barren wasteland, he'd heard the gulls and waves. Smelled the salt. Felt the soft press of her lips to his. He'd slept with her body warm beside him, his yearning a bonfire in his heart, and woken to sand. When he'd wanted to be clean, the sand had disappeared. He'd thought of the ocean, washing his wings in it, the bracing chill of glacier water spilling through his feathers and swiping away the stains—the smut—of Hell's endless pyroclastic churn. 

Is ocean the common factor?

He considers the scotch. He'd been chatting with Mr. Lawson about a toast. He'd been lonely, wanting to share a drink with his newly liberated friend. So badly, he'd ached.

_Aw, man_ , Mr. Lawson had said. _Hell ain't got scotch?_

At the time, Lucifer's only liquid consideration had been alcohol. Not ocean. 

Before the piano had materialized, Lucifer had been filled with distaste for New York, and hijacked by faulty syllogisms about Mr. Lawson being _special_. Beyond the fact he'd provided sorely needed companionship, Mr. Lawson hadn't been special—he'd been like any of the countless souls trapped in Hell, all imprisoned by elaborate, repeating shrines to their own misery. 

Lucifer contemplates how he'd felt, sitting at the piano—the original Steinway Model D in East Indian rosewood—in Mr. Lawson's loop. The tuneless, twangy notes of _Eternal Flame_ had tortured his ears. The salesman had enquired if Lucifer desired to buy, and Lucifer had declined. No point in purchasing a figment. Then he'd gotten angry and shoved the piano away, destroying it.

His beautiful piano.

A familiar pang resonates from an epicenter in Lucifer's heart. "Oh"—he furrows his brow—"oh, that's … interesting."

"What is?" asks Amenadiel.

A lackluster, dead feather molts from Amenadiel's wing, and Lucifer brushes the lost plumage away as it drifts past his face. Lucifer thinks of Hell's destruction. He hadn't really been angry or in denial, had he? He'd accepted the inevitability of Lilith. Of her will eclipsing his. He'd been too bankrupt for anger. Home, he'd wanted, almost with a mourning quality. Home. No more torture. No more exhaustion or humiliation or pain. No more being forced into vile action. Just … home. He'd thought it over and over. 

Home.

He'd felt the same at the piano, too. And on his Greater Throne when he'd thought of kissing the Detective. To him, she _is_ home _._

"Yearning," he says, inhaling sharply. "Bitter yearning. Longing. Desire that physically hurts." Like what his compulsion had made him feel, only not forced, or enhanced, or twisted unnaturally into something sexual. "That's the common thread. I yearned for the things I received." 

"Good, Luci," Amenadiel says, perking up, even as two of his longer primary feathers detach from his wings and float into the empty. "That's good!"

"I wouldn't call it good," Lucifer grumbles. Why must everything require pain? Dad is a bloody sadist. "But it's certainly thematically consistent with the sword." 

And it would explain why he can't make a coin he doesn't care one whit about. _And_ perhaps why smaller creative leaps hadn't hurt. Because they had. They _had_ hurt, commensurate with the size of the task involved. He'd simply mistaken the pain for more yearning. Bloody hell, it's a wonder the Detective hadn't shown up in his palace one day. Or, perhaps, even subconsciously, he'd been smart enough never to truly wish for that.

"So," Amenadiel prods, "how would you channel longing like you did grief with the sword?" 

"I think it's simple, really."

Lucifer needs to yearn for Hell so badly he hurts. 

Hell needs to be home. 

Which … makes it unfortunate he'd rather take Beatrice, three of her young friends, and a clowder of yowling cats to a Justin Bieber concert than be here, fixing this bloody mess.

"Right," Lucifer says, "I need you to yell at me, please. Tell me I'm evil again, or something. Dealer's choice."

Amenadiel's frozen hand comes to rest on Lucifer's shoulder. "I'm not doing that."

"Irredeemable? That might work."

"No, Luci."

"A monster? The root of all human atrocity?"

"No."

"Well, how _else_ am I supposed to hate myself enough to yearn for Hell?" Lucifer snaps.

"You hating yourself won't save anything—not me, not you, not Chloe, not anybody. I refuse to believe that."

Ire heats Lucifer's insides. "If you've a better bloody idea, by all means."

The haunting silence expands, filled only by the distant suffering wails of trillions. The lights, like a pitchfork mob, accuse him. Lilith's cold arms snake—

A panicked yelp skips loose from Lucifer's lips as he flips backward, momentum and no resistance carrying him into a feather-flapping spiral. The pitchfork mob yaws wildly. His brain barrel rolls. By the time he rights himself, his stomach is rolling as well. "What the bloody hell were you doing?" 

Amenadiel cringes. "… Hugging you?"

"Yes, but _why_."

"Thought it was a better idea?"

"Check back when I've not recently been _enslaved and violated_ ," Lucifer enunciates through his teeth.

"Sorry," Amenadiel repeats glumly. His big body trembles. Another feather molts, leaving an entire row of primaries now stripped bald. "Sorry. Wasn't thinking."

"You should return to Earth," Lucifer suggests, scowling. "You're not equipped for this."

"No. I'm not leaving you."

"Don't be _silly_ , brother. If you stay much longer, I'll have to tow you out."

"No," Amenadiel repeats. "I'm not leaving you alone."

Lucifer's chest twinges. "But—"

"Not. Leaving you."

He will not get weepy over this. He will _not_ get _—_ a lump expands in his throat. All he'd ever wanted from his family—support, acceptance—and here it flies. In the brother who, four years and some odd millennia ago, had actually resurrected a sociopath to have Lucifer murdered. If only his other siblings would give him a chance as well. Or Dad. If only— 

His inhalation is a sharp stitch, flooding his insides with bitter burning cold.

Why can't they realize he's _good_?

Why can't he be _good_?

That's what he wants. 

What he wants more than anything.

For people—for his estranged family—for Dad—to see he's _good_. Or at least trying. He wants his life to have meaning beyond "The Devil made me do it." He wants to do right by the vanishing small sect of people who've ever cared about him. He wants to fix things for the Mr. Lawsons of the world. For all of Lucifer's human avatars, rotting in a Hell they don't deserve, don't understand, and have no idea they're stuck in.

He _wants_.

The Void blurs, and Lucifer can't breathe. He can't _breathe_ as desire cleaves him like a blade. He thinks of the way he desires Hell to be—not a punitive permanent nightmare but a rehab facility. A place for all the disillusioned devils of the world to reexamine their priorities and atone. 

He arches forward, curling inward like a desiccating bug, digging deep and holding onto that feeling—that _desire_ —until he can push it outward. 

Until he chooses. 

Fireworks explode along his nerves. He stretches his wings to their full span, his feathers splaying as he contorts and convulses and writhes. The force of his yearning burgeons, until he's bellowing into the Void, the pain a vivid, violent roar that breaks his vocal cords and fills his vision with riotous red spots. Something paws at his arm, then grips his hand, smashing his knuckles together. He bites his own tongue, and then his lip. Tastes copper. Blood gurgles in his throat, choking him. 

_I'm here, Luci,_ someone barks on the fringes of his awareness. _I'm here! You can do it!_

But Lucifer can't see beyond red anymore. Can't feel beyond pain. Can't think beyond what he covets _._

He wants to fix Hell.

He wants to be _good_.

His yearning agonizes, excruciates, hangs him on a rack.

But the choice is his, and he makes it.

He hurts until he's harrowed through and hollowed out, exhausted and nerveless, every speck of conscious thought consumed, birthing his heart's desire unto Creation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for all the lovely feedback. Anyone who takes the time, whether it's a comment or kudos, is amazing in my book :)


	50. "a new kind of Hell loop"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everybody who takes the time to leave feedback, be that comments or kudos!

When he wakes enough to perceive, his eyelashes are caked together, his mouth is a bog pit, and his head is pounding. He tries to lift an arm to rub the crust from his eyes, but his bicep is like overcooked spaghetti, and his thoughts don't translate into action. His body throbs. Air whistles through his lungs, making him sound one weak breath from a death rattle. 

Something rustles nearby. 

There's a heartbeat not his own.

Respiration, in and out.

Life, not his.

"Hey, I'm here," says Amenadiel calmly before Lucifer can panic. "You awake?"

"Define," he croaks, barely, "awake."

"It's okay. You're safe. I've been watching."

For once, that's reassuring. 

"Hell?" Lucifer asks.

Footsteps. The ground sinks. A warmth fills the space beside him. "Yeah," says Amenadiel, his voice suddenly thick with emotion, "everything's sealed. No more Void. You did good, Luci. You did really good."

Lucifer wants to be good.

An ache that hadn't existed before—this time deep in his chest—adds a note to his agonizing symphony. Breathing hurts. His insides aren't right, like one big liquid contusion.

"Rest," says Amenadiel. "I'm watching."

Exhaustion drags on the fringes of Lucifer's awareness. His already vague sense of the space around his body wavers. Drifts. And then he's sinking into a limbo where he doesn't hurt and doesn't wonder:

Did what? 

* * *

Time passes, infinite and infinitesimal, forever since he'd last woken, yet instantaneous. 

This time, he can weakly rub his eyes, freeing his eyelashes to blink. A dark, featureless plane stretches before his face until it abruptly drops off, like the myth of a flat Earth. Except this Earth sits next to a polished surface—glass—and atop the glass rests a white basketball-sized sphere. Beyond that, a brown leather reading chair, and a shimmering black wall of sheer curtains. Exactly like—

He bolts upright, a down comforter spilling from his shoulder to his hip. His vision fuzzes. 

"What," he croaks, waiting for equilibrium. 

The oozing carpet recedes from his sight heartbeat by heartbeat, revealing his fully furnished penthouse. His _home_. His. 

" _What_ ," he repeats.

Had Amenadiel returned him to Earth? 

_Why_?

The circulating air—not hot, not cool, perfectly matched to his preferences—billows against his naked skin, a balm. 

His legs wobble when he stands, his stomach lurching. He flaps his wings reflexively to save his balance. They materialize and slap the bedframe. The light globe on his nightstand tips to the floor and shatters at his bare feet. His wings, a spent parachute, droop and then sprawl across the bed behind him. 

"Amenadiel?" he rasps, barely audible. 

But no one answers.

"Brother?"

Nothing.

"So much," Lucifer grumbles, "for _watching_."

Shambling forward, he trips into the curtains, accidentally yanking them from the overhead rod as he grabs them for purchase. 

"What," he gasps again, panting, stunned.

The sight beyond the window is not Los Angeles, and yet it is. To the southeast, spectral and sprawling, familiar high-rises, all lit to brilliance, hold up arms like offerings to a sable, star-stippled sky. To the southwest, a strip of glowing bioluminescent blue. Above, the heavens aren't purple or hazed. The riot of stars would put a Hubble photograph to shame. Below, Hollywood's Walk of Fame remains. The clubs and theaters and restaurants. The culture and nightlife. But no vehicles belch exhaust into the air, and the sparse crowd fits a small town, not a city of millions.

Strangest, though, is the southern view. The familiar sharp jags and crags of the Screaming Cliffs carve the skyline, exactly as they'd looked from his palace balcony, only, now, from a higher vantage.

Has his penthouse—the city itself—replaced the obsidian-glass plains of Strife and Discord?

He looks more closely at the beings below. Some are demons, yes. Some, though, are souls, shining bright but given form. Souls, roaming free. Not trapped.

Trembling, he pulls away from the window.

Hell.

This really is Hell.

Whatever bastardization he's made of it, anyway.

 _Something that takes your vast life experience and uses it_.

But is this beautiful?

No ash dirties his sheets. There's no sulfur stench to nauseate. His electric lamp, reduced to shards scattered like stars across his floor—there'd been none of that in Hell before. Not lamps, not electricity. Hell had been _medieval_.

What hath he wrought?

But the idea of venturing beyond his bedroom wearies him. He puts his wings away. Muscles shivering from strain, he accepts the alluring invitation of his mattress and soft pillows. He burrows, pulling up ash-free blankets and sheets. Just that effort leaves him panting again. Exhausted again.

His eyelids grow heavy. 

Streaming through the gap in his curtains, the pleasing glow of night-time Hell Angeles laves his face. 

Time stretches once more into the infinite infinitesimal.

* * *

Before he wakes, his curtains are fixed. The broken light globe is swept away, leaving his Italian marble floors immaculate and gleaming. A note, written in lovely script, sits on his nightstand, weighted down by an empty tumbler. " _Pray if you need help next time. -Amenadiel_ ," it says.

A gentle scolding if ever there was one.

Perhaps his brother _is_ watching, only … not every moment. Which makes sense. He has a growing child, after all. A life on Earth. Love.

Lucifer takes that thought—and the pang accompanying it—not into nothingness, but for the first time since Hell's rebirth, into Dreaming instead.

* * *

His penthouse has water. Hot, clean water. Epsom salts. Towels fluffier than nimbus clouds. Scented candles: jasmine, cinnamon, citrus, and one that smells just like the Detective's conditioner. 

There are cycles, now. An indication of passing time. A reliable oscillation between twilight and night. He likes night.

As his aching, overtaxed body heals, he takes to soaking in his hot tub for hours, stargazing. Newborn heavenly bodies form unfamiliar constellations. He debates names, but stops when ideas like Detective's Gun, Dr. Linda's Couch, and Daniel's Pudding Cup turn him wistful.

Suits and other clothes from an array of designers—Burberry, Prada, Armani, and more—cram his closet. Bottles of Earth's finest liquors stock his bar. A fresh, undying cornucopia stuffs his fridge—there's even a plastic box containing chocolate cake. Books and knickknacks fill his bookshelves. 

Delights, all of them.

Even a piano has found his living room. Not the Model D in East Indian rosewood, but his well-loved piano from Earth, the key action familiar, the tone bright and full.

A home away from home.

 _Almost_.

He tries not to think of the Detective.

He tries.

* * *

What. Hath. He. Wrought?

Lucifer has no idea how much time has passed before he feels restored enough—impervious enough—to don his armor. A black Prada suit, white Prada shirt, red-soled Louboutins, and red silk pocket square. He hasn't seen Amenadiel again. Hasn't seen a soul, except those few passing on the streets below like unhurried ants.

With a Word, he lowers the wards separating Above and Below. The elevator lurches downward, plunging fast enough to shove his guts into his ribcage, as if he's diving into free fall from his Greater Throne. 

Is that what his new penthouse is? 

The one place he can watch his kingdom, undisturbed by the plights of those below? 

He leans against the cabin wall, trying and mostly succeeding not to quiver with useless nerves. Music crescendos as his descent completes. The piano part of _So Many Roads, So Many Trains_ , accompanied by growly, familiar-sounding vocals. Surely not Otis Rush himself? 

Hmm.

The elevator doors open, revealing the upper level of Lux. Lush dark carpet and iron railings. A blast of cool air, smelling faintly of sex and sweat, wallops him when he steps out to grab the railing. 

The club is hardly near capacity. Amongst a cadre of demonic waitstaff, perhaps thirty corporealized souls perch at hightop tables or laze in the floor-level booths. Or they dance. Or they chat. One soul—a black man wearing a black suit and shiny black shoes, but not Mr. Rush—sits at the piano, facing away from Lucifer, as he belts out familiar lyrics. 

"I was standin' by my window," he cries, an emotional lament, "when I heard that whistle blow. You know I thought it was a Streamline, but it was a B and O."

Lucifer snickers. "Well, that line hasn't aged well." But the music. To hear actual music—blues and soul, no less—in Hell. 

He closes his eyes, swaying, _feeling_ the song until it concludes, and the man pauses to rest his fingers and sip from a crystal glass. Lucifer claps, the sound resonating off the walls. "Bravo!" He descends the steps, not entirely gracefully, as still healing muscles strain to accommodate him. "Lovely show."

Excited whispers burgeon. Words like king and sire, Satan and Devil reverberate. But the noise falls away, pushed off a cliff as Lucifer's eyes lock with the pianist's.

"Father Frank," he says, his insides swooping as they had in the elevator. "Father Frank, you shouldn't _be_ here. Why the bloody hell are you _here_?" 

What had Lucifer _done_?

But Father Frank smiles, pulling the hood over the piano's keys. The bench creaks as he pushes it backward and stands. "Heard you could use some help," he says, brushing off his black sleeves. "Thought I'd come see for myself."

"Heard from _whom_?" Lucifer demands as Father Frank approaches. "Help with _what_?"

"Word gets around." Father Frank shrugs. "Helping people forgive themselves."

"But how did you bloody _get_ here?"

"Your sister."

Azrael. Bloody hell. "She shouldn't be carrying you places you aren't meant to be. That's not how—"

"You think you're the only one who's changed?" Father Frank asks gently. "I'm exactly where I should be."

"But—"

"Not because I feel guilty," he continues, "but because it's my responsibility to help."

"You don't have responsibilities anymore," Lucifer snaps. "You are _dead_. Prematurely, I might add." 

Father Frank's expression warms further. "Missed me?"

Yes. Lucifer scowls. "I'm simply noting the unnaturalness of your departure, and wondering why you've left paradise for … for"—he gestures futilely at the club—"for _this_."

"Free will, right?" answers Father Frank. "Isn't that what you preach?"

Bloody _hell_. "Yes, well, I always thought you were insane." Lucifer glances at Father Frank's glass. "Please, at least, tell me you've not come here to drink water."

"Oh, no." Father Frank peers into his shimmering drink. "Headed back in a few minutes; that's all. Wanted— _needed_ —to be sober."

"Back," Lucifer says, "to Heaven?"

"Death's Rows." So, those still exist. The loops. "I have a woman who's almost ready to leave. A couple more nudges, and—"

"You're going into the loops? _Helping_ people?"

"Yes. Like you did."

"How the bloody hell would you know about that. My sister again?"

"No."

Lucifer's heart squeezes as dots connect. "Mr. Lawson."

Father Frank holds up his glass in silent homage, then rests a warm hand on Lucifer's wrist. "Lucifer, Heaven will always be there: it's eternal. For now, I want to be here, helping a righteous cause."

"How dare you," Lucifer scoffs without bite, "I am not righteous."

Frank only grins.

Lucifer rolls his eyes. "I need a bloody drink."

He wheels on his feet and stalks toward the bar. Corporeal souls sit at the stools, sipping cocktails, as the wheezing bartender rummages behind the counter, glasses clinking and boxes shuffling. Lucifer slaps his palm impatiently against the bar top.

"Hello?" he calls. "I desire"—he sees the turtle-like beak first, and then the beady eyes and needle teeth—"Squee."

"My king," the demon says with awe, or perhaps fear. He bows, pressing his nose against the countertop. "My king, welcome. How may I serve?"

 _Please,_ he'd begged. _Please, don't kill me! I didn't mean it! Please, I didn't mean—_

"Get up," Lucifer commands, flinching at the lurid memory. "Up, Squee."

The little demon straightens.

"You're my bloody bartender? You?"

"Yes, my king." Squee nods earnestly. "I am still learning mixes, though. Who knew liquid could be arranged in such delightful ways?" A buoyant grin twists his already gnarled features. "Have you tried a thing called Amaretto Sour?"

"That's not a drink; that's candy in a bloody glass."

"Is that bad, my king?"

"Well, no, but it's not a drink to get drunk with, particularly not with my constitution."

"And you wish to get drunk?"

"In this moment, more than anything."

Squee's face scrunches as he considers. "Do Cosmopolitans work? I learned them for—"

"Amenadiel."

"Yes, my king."

Lucifer sighs. "How about scotch on the rocks?" 

"Which rocks are best?" Squee asks.

Perhaps Hell hasn't frozen after all. "How about just the scotch?"

"Which one is scotch?"

Lucifer searches the club, dismayed to note every single patron sports either a red cocktail garnished with lime, or a yellow one topped by a cherry and a slice of orange. "Oh, bloody hell, just give me the bloody Cosmo"—Lucifer snaps his fingers insistently as Squee reaches for the cranberry juice—"but put nothing in it except the vodka."

Squee pushes the juice aside. "Yes, my king."

"We call that serving it neat."

"This is a neat Cosmopolitan?"

Lucifer rubs his temples as his skull starts to pound again. "Close enough."

Something clinks in front of him. Lucifer squints. Instead of a tumbler rests a cocktail glass, filled to the brim with clear liquid. He takes it, half-expecting water, only for the pleasant burn of high-proof alcohol to soothe his throat. Gulping, he chugs the whole thing. He only _wishes_ this alone were enough to—

A hot flush unfurls across his face. Down his neck. The room swims, and colors smear before his eyes.

"Oh," he says, laughing a bit, "well, that's … delightful."

Angel-strength instant-tipsy cocktails.

What hath he wrought, indeed. Now, he wishes he'd braved the bar upstairs instead of passing it by each time he'd wandered the living room.

"Another?" asks Squee.

"Yes," says Lucifer. "Yes, please."

His glass is refilled. The heat from the alcohol he'd already drank burgeons pleasantly in his gut, warming his belly. He blinks slowly, suddenly tired. But that, perhaps, is the strain of Creation. Of leaving things behind. Not the alcohol.

_Kill him, my king. I want him dead._

"Squee, do you recall what happened … before?" Lucifer finds himself asking despite his better judgment. "When I …?" Was enslaved. Humiliated. "When your mother …?" Forced him.

"What do you mean, my king?"

"Do you remember Lilith asking me to hurt you?"

Squee cocks his head, his mystified expression giving way to panic. "Have I done something wrong, sire? I am sorry. I will fix—"

Lucifer reaches across the bar, grabbing the demon's wrist. "No. No, you've done nothing wrong." Squee trembles. "Never you mind." Lucifer feels sick to his stomach. "It's over, now. It's done." Is it over? Is it done?

"My king?"

Lucifer releases him, chugging the vodka from the second glass as quickly as he had the first. "I can't believe I'm bloody saying this, Squee, but I'm chuffed to see you."

The demon's eyes and mouth form two perfect little Os and a D, flipped on its side. " _Really_?"

Lucifer clears his throat, looking away. "Yes. Really."

"Oh, thank you, my king," Squee gushes. "It's a pleasure to see you as well. Your absence was noted. We have been most concerned for your welfare."

"We?"

"The Lilim, of course." 

Ah. The demons. Resurrected and whole. 

"Not that we begrudge you any time you wish to spend above us, my king."

"Of course," Lucifer agrees.

 _Be change_. 

The Detective's words echo in his head. Plunge a blade into his heart. The creeping ache of fatigue returns to his muscles. Lucifer turns, searching the small crowd for Father Frank, but he's gone, perhaps already helping the woman he'd spoken of. 

* * *

Lucifer rides the elevator back to his penthouse, tensing when he hears voices—chatter, laughter, the clink of glasses crashing together as a toast is made. He'd left the wards down, not thinking anyone would dare to breach his sanctum while he was downstairs. He's tired, but he'll fight tooth and nail if he mu—

"Charlotte," he says, the word an exclamation point more than functional, as he halts in the doorway, his gaze wildly searching the three human souls sprawled on his Italian leather sofas, the ethereal nighttime skyline framing them in haunting relief. Charlotte. Father Frank. And … and, "Mr. Lawson." 

"Hey, man," says Mr. Lawson, grinning, "Frank told us y'finally came down to say hello. We'd'a visited sooner but the way was blocked." The ward. Lucifer had always tweaked it in the past to allow Mr. Lawson through. "Feelin' better?"

Lucifer blinks. "What are you _doing_ here?"

"Helping," answers Charlotte with a shrug. "We wanted to help."

"But—"

"Paradise ain't all it's cracked up to be," explains Mr. Lawson. He sips from his tumbler, his thick hair tilting over his forehead like hanging vines. "Particularly not now that Hell's got scotch."

"I'm shocked you bloody _found_ scotch," says Lucifer wryly. "My bartender seems stuck on vodka at the moment."

Mr. Lawson gestures at the wet bar. "Another reason I wanted to visit, I confess." Rich amber-colored liquid fills his glass. "Is this seriously the same $100,000 Bowmore ya smashed? It's smoother than my Brazilian."

Before.

Lucifer glances at the bottle, which is perched on the coffee table. He remembers dumping that scotch into the thick ash of Death's Rows, remembers busting the bottle and spreading the glass across the plains of Strife and Discord as a warning. Now, a dozen copies line the top shelf of his bar like bowling pins.

 _What if it's just … y'know, a good thing?_ Mr. Lawson had said.

"You were right," Lucifer murmurs, distant, half submerged in the murky past, half trapped in the painful present. "It … wasn't poison." It had been his truth.

"Huh?" says Mr. Lawson.

Lucifer tries to yank himself from a ghastly full-fledged flashback. He counts to three in his head, breathing. What Dr. Linda had taught him. His fingers clench.

"You okay?" asks Father Frank from somewhere far away. 

"Charlotte," Lucifer blurts before easing off the syllabic throttle, "you … you didn't want to be here. Redemption was your entire imperative!"

"I didn't want to get tortured for eternity, no," Charlotte says. "But this isn't torture—it feels good to help people the way you and Amenadiel helped me."

"Same," adds Mr. Lawson. "Pay it forward, y'know?"

"You humans," Lucifer marvels as he retreats to grab a glass from the bar. He's so habituated to seeing humanity's capacity for evil, he often forgets their equally depthless capacity for charity. "I … I've no idea what to say."

"Good to see ya is a nice start," jokes Mr. Lawson.

"Of course it's lovely to see you." Lucifer eases into the chair by the slider. He aches, and his head swims. " _All_ of you. I never thought I'd—" See any of them again, he can't say. He's too choked up. His dear friends. They don't fill the same aching void the Detective had, but they help.

Mr. Lawson hops up, toting the scotch bottle with him. "Thank you," Lucifer says faintly as a glass is poured for him. 

"No problem. It's your scotch."

Lucifer laughs, taking a sip, relishing the smoke and peat as it unfurls on his tongue. He relishes the company, more, though. Company. In Hell. Who'd have thought?

"Are the souls in my club the people you've assisted?" he asks. 

"Some," says Charlotte. "Some emerged on their own. They stay in the city until they're ready to go." 

"Go."

"To Heaven, yeah," Mr. Lawson chimes in. "The changes show people where they are, help 'em see where they wanna go."

"A halfway house for the damned," Lucifer murmurs over the lip of his glass, staring into space.

"Yeah," says Charlotte. "Good way to look at it."

Lucifer scoffs softly.

What hath he wrought?

Good remains to be seen.

But "better than the previous nightmare" seems firmly within his grasp.

Perhaps spending eternity here won't be so bloody miserable anymore.

* * *

Geography has changed to become Hell Angeles, or, as Lucifer likes to call it, Hell A. Strife and Discord are gone to accommodate the new cityscape. The Screaming Cliffs and Death's Rows remain, but remodeled. No ash or pyroclastic detritus accumulates, leaving rooms stacked on rooms stacked on rooms, each exposed to pleasant-smelling air, not brimstone. Switchback pathways traverse the cliff faces, ensuring everything remains accessible, not buried and forgotten. 

The woman Father Frank is helping, Celeste Carr, had been an addict. She'd died at the wheel, so strung out on coke her heart had exploded. Not literally. But she'd skidded through a red light, killing what little of herself remained on impact, along with three of the five people who'd been in the car she'd hit. She'd been gone—non-perceiving—before she'd committed involuntary manslaughter, so she'd perished without guilt. Raguel, though, had noped her straight to Hell. Remorse had bloomed naturally afterward, once she'd experienced her first loop, now epochs earlier.

As they enter, her truck is skidding through the light. Metal screams. Rubber squeals. The people in the other car—a minivan—don't have time to react. The end is gruesome but quick, a resonating crunch preceding eerie silence.

Ms. Carr scrambles from her SUV, screaming, blood pouring down her face, her survival an embellishment to help her bathe in guilt.

"You chose this loop, of all loops?" Lucifer says as a younger figment of Father Frank, not yet dressed as a clergyman, stumbles from the van, a child clutched in his trembling arms. He sets the boy on the pavement, away from the carnage and broken glass. 

"Stay there, Connor!" the Frank figment instructs. "Don't move." He turns back to the car, frantic. "Vanessa! Vanessa! Wake up!"

The real Father Frank asks, "Are you really surprised?"

"No," Lucifer admits. "I suppose not." Father Frank had picked the Devil for a companion, after all. "You do enjoy a challenge."

"I've been working on her since I got here."

"Have you."

"We'll drink to it later," Father Frank decides. "When I succeed."

Approaching sirens wail. Blue and red lights flicker. "You're not obligated," he says to Father Frank. "You owe this woman nothing. Not one bloody thing." 

"I know," answers Frank.

"Do you?" Lucifer says, turning fully toward him. "Or have you perhaps created a new kind of Hell loop for yourself? Futilely trying to fix your worst nightmare?"

"No loop; I promise. Only … serenity."

Lucifer scoffs. "Serenity." He gestures at the wreckage. "You call this serenity."

Father Frank is silent, watching with dark-eyed empathy as Ms. Carr sobs by the bodies of Connor's parents and Frank's daughter. 

"Knowing I'm helping those who need it is serenity," insists Father Frank. "That's why I swore an oath to God. To help."

"You must not have met him yet if you think your oath is worth a bloody damn to him."

"It's worth a damn to me," replies Frank, the words soft.

The loop dissolves, snapping them into a familiar office. 

"Hello," Dr. Linda—another figment, anyway—says. "Celeste, how are you feeling today?" 

On the couch, Ms. Carr, covered in dirt and gravel and bleeding scrapes, sobs and snivels. Lucifer's chest tightens at the morbid scene. Dr. Linda didn't know Father Frank or Celeste Carr. How …? 

"I want to remind you you can end this any time." Dr. Linda points to Lucifer and Father Frank. Or, rather, through them. Lucifer skips out of the way. "The exit's right there. It's not locked."

"I know," warbles Ms. Carr. "I know it is, but I _can't_. I killed those poor people! Didn't you see?"

"Would you like to talk about that? We can walk through it, step by step."

"No."

Father Frank interposes himself between Ms. Carr and the figment Dr. Linda. "Dr. Martin, mind if I step in today?"

She gestures across the table before pushing her glasses up her nose. "By all means."

Lucifer suddenly feels as though he's intruding. "Right, well." He clears his throat. "I'll leave you to it." 

And he flees through the door he'd entered.

* * *

Some souls are damaged. They can't be made to feel guilt, and they can't be fixed, not even with Will—he cannot amend humanity's basic building block. That power seems to be Dad's alone. In Hell's previous iteration, these fundamentally wrong individuals had been sequestered and tortured in the Pit. Now, they have their own space, which _does_ have a lock.

The rec area is bright and open, furnished with tables and chairs and a stage for theatrical productions and assemblies. Several affected humans sit in a chair circle, their souls in varying states of vitiation. A blond adonis near the window sports only greenish discoloration beneath his corporeal form. In contrast, the poor sap three seats away looks like Swiss cheese underneath his chosen skin, as though his soul had been bloody lobotomized. 

Lucifer takes everyone's measures, wondering again at Dad's plan—torturing humans for things _he_ broke, not them, seems twisted, but twisted is what Hell had been—when Lucifer finds one poor soul who isn't damaged at all. Beneath his flesh, he's a brilliant burst of golden light, exactly as he should be. 

Corporeally speaking, he's a brown-haired man, sporting a mustache that had gone out of style years ago. His bargain-bin checkered suit looks old, too, but not fashionably retro. "Does anyone have anything they'd like to share with the group today?" he asks, readying his pen and notepad. 

Lucifer raises his hand.

The man startles, eyes widening. "Um. Yes, sir?"

"You're not Doctor Linda's figment."

"No, I'm Mort," Mr. Mustache replies.

"Your name is _Dead_?" Lucifer laughs, a quick bark of amusement. "How apropos."

Mort only gapes. 

"Well, do elaborate, will you? Why are you trapped with these degenerates?"

"I'm not trapped," Mort says slowly. "I volunteered."

Lucifer cocks his head. "You volunteered to come to a Hellish mental institution? Curiouser and curiouser."

The man flounders, cracks and pops of meaningless syllables perishing in his throat. But then he gathers himself. Breathes in. Breathes out. And holds up a hand, the universal sign for, _one sec_. 

Lucifer arches an eyebrow. 

But "Mort" smiles—grimaces to hide terror?—and tells the group, "Talk amongst yourselves for a few minutes, okay, everybody? I'll be right back." Then he rises from his chair, motioning for Lucifer to follow.

Lucifer humors him.

"Dr. Mortimer Fawkes," the man introduces himself as they enter the hall, and Lucifer can't help but laugh again. Dead Sea Phoenix. Oh, dear. What a name. "I'm a specialist in Antisocial Personality Disorder."

"Are you?" Lucifer purrs. "Do tell."

"Yes, sir, I got my doctorate at UC Davis."

"Well, Doctor, why aren't you in a regular loop, bludgeoning yourself with your guilt?" 

The man frowns. "I don't think my talents are best put to use that way, are they?" 

"Your … talents."

Dr. Fawkes licks his lips nervously. "I wanted to help, so I came down from the Silv—"

"Wait, you're from Heaven as well?"

"I can go back," Dr. Fawkes offers quickly. "I'm sorry. Please, don't punish me."

"No, I …." Lucifer draws back a step, rattled. "No, I don't punish innocents. I have _never_ punished innocents, Dr. Fawkes."

The man slumps, a sigh gusting from his lips. "Oh, thank God."

"Please, don't while you're here." 

"Right. Sorry. Still internalizing the benevolent Satan thing."

Lucifer will not take the bait. He will _not—_ "What is it you're hoping to do here, Dr. Fawkes?"

"Well, I mean, obviously these people did something pretty awful to get stuck down here. They're not just in Hell because they're mentally ill. Being sick isn't a sin."

"But?" prods Lucifer.

"But many with ASPD can lead normal lives if they're given the right help, and the right tools to help themselves. Maybe these people weren't given that when they were alive." 

"And you're attempting to rectify that?"

"Yes. Speaking of which, I have one patient who I really think deserves parole."

Lucifer peers over Dr. Fawkes's shoulder. While several individuals from the chair circle seem disengaged, staring coldly, or hotly, but not conversing, others seem … almost well adjusted. Animated, even. Smiling, sometimes. Perhaps Fawkes is on to something. 

"The blond?" Lucifer nods at the barely damaged adonis he'd spotted earlier. 

"Yeah. Marvin. He's doing really great now. Maybe not enough for Heaven, but definitely for Hell A, as long as he keeps coming here for sessions. Can we discuss that, Mr. Devil, sir?"

"Yes." Lucifer folds his arms. "One condition, though."

"Sir?"

"Tell me why you're here, really," Lucifer says, gesturing vaguely at the space around them. "Instead of in paradise, I mean. What made you choose to enter Perdition when you've the option to be elsewhere? To enjoy your just rewards?"

"I guess. Um." Mr. Fawkes churns on the question for a heartbeat, two, three, before deciding, "I feel best when I'm helping people who need it. Except nobody needs help in the Silver City because everything is perfect."

"How very boring."

"Exactly. It's _boring_." Dr. Fawkes's lips quirk at the corners, and he sighs like someone who'd been served a decadent slice of pie, his anticipation mounting as he debates whether to Instagram it for the slavering masses, or savor its sweetness immediately. "I feel better down here."

In Hell. This is becoming a bloody trend, Heaven's denizens flying the coop. But … if they really desire to be here ….

"Well, far be it from me to interrupt your personal Elysium," Lucifer says, turning away. "Enjoy yourself, Dr. Fawkes. But do let Rae-Rae know if you wish to return where you belong."

"What about Marvin?"

"Ah, yes." The adonis. The parole. "Have you an office where we can discuss the matter?"

"Oh. Yeah. I do."

Lucifer follows as Fawkes, gabbing about his various enrichment programs and projects, leads him through a maze of hallways. Apparently, a whole cadre of benevolent souls—all emigrated from Heaven for the joy of "strife"—assist him with his mission. 

That humans would dislike the Silver City doesn't shock Lucifer. But that they would voluntarily descend into Hell—his Hell, the place _he_ made—is something he's still having trouble fathoming. He nods at intervals toward Fawkes, partially listening, but mostly exploring, and thinking. 

The walls, all painted green, strike a soothing contrast to the immaculate white of many medical institutions. Plexiglass ceilings allow warmth and starlight through, leaving the place feeling open and airy, not claustrophobic. They pass a game room equipped with a television, a sprawling leather sofa, and diversions like billiards and ping pong. Several humans play, or chat, or watch.

Lucifer and Fawkes walk into what must be the "residential" area. Each room sports a bed, a desk, a bookshelf. Personal touches—artwork and crochet, books and stationery—litter each space. Occasionally, a patron choosing not to participate in therapy greets Lucifer with a wave, or a, "Hello, sir," or a blank stare, depending how impaired they are. More often than not, though, the rooms are empty, their permanent residents away, interacting with their damaged fellows.

Until something familiar niggles, deep in the wending bowels of the beast. A room, not vacated. Lucifer cranes his neck, peering over his shoulder. The door hangs wide open, and the thrum of human life resides within.

"Hello?" he calls, his voice echoing.

Dr. Fawkes, several strides ahead, slows. "Oh," he says, "she's long gone, sir. I can't reach her. No one can."

She.

"Hello?" Lucifer repeats, turning fully to face the doorway, taking a step toward the tiny room.

On the threshold, his insides drop like bags of wet cement.

She hovers in the corner of her room, incorporeal, shivering, broken. No skeletons of aborted hobbies decorate her space. Though the door hangs open—the egress into the hallway trumpeting the option to join Dr. Fawkes's therapy sessions—she remains. Her soul, which should be the size of a beach ball, looks instead like a rotting cherry. Atrophied, small enough to fit in Lucifer's palm, it oozes red and black, no warmth or light remaining. He's never seen a human so ruined.

"Lilith," he says, the word cowed and breathy with shock.

She doesn't move. Doesn't reply. Ghosts of her cold hands stroke his spine, and then grope him. He clutches the doorframe, denting the metal with five finger-sized craters.

"She's not responsive," explains Mr. Fawkes, coming up behind him. "I'm not even convinced she can speak, let alone learn acceptable behavior patterns."

Lucifer blinks. He hadn't expected ….

 _You survived, and she didn't_.

Of course, Lilith would bloody be here. He'd vaporized her human shell, not what little had lingered of her soul. 

_You should not love, my king,_ she'd said. _It never ends well._

 _What do_ you _know of love?_ he'd asked.

_Nothing, anymore._

She's too broken to feel guilt for what she'd done.

What she'd done _to him_.

Tortured him. Twisted his mind. Used him.

Hurt him.

Over, and over, and over.

 _My slave, my pet_.

"Mr. Devil?" prods Dr. Fawkes.

Lucifer backs away. "Apologies," he rasps before clearing his throat. "Apologies, we'll have to resume this discussion another time. I need … to be somewhere else."

He flees before Dr. Mortimer Fawkes can reply.

* * *

As the elevator doors trundle open, Amenadiel is pouring himself a shot of bourbon. "Luci"—he grabs a second glass from the shelf—"you're looking better."

Lucifer sinks onto the couch, strangling a relieved groan before it leaves his throat, as he eases weight off his legs. He'd only been exploring for hours—a small excursion—but as much as he wishes he were fully healed, his stamina has yet to return. 

_Giving birth takes it out of you,_ said the Detective, grinning.

His aching sharpens.

A glass clinks as Amenadiel sets it on the coffee table by Lucifer's knee. "I brought you something," he says. 

Lucifer cracks open tired eyes. The glass is too far away to bother grabbing. He wants sleep more than scotch.

"Not that," Amenadiel says, fishing in the pocket of his stained gray hoodie. He withdraws a book-sized device, a bitten white apple emblazoned on the back, a familiar red squiggle where Beatrice had marked the edge with permanent ink. "This." He foists the iPad at Lucifer.

The Detective's iPad.

"What's this for?" asks Lucifer, taking it. 

Amenadiel smiles enigmatically, lowering himself onto the opposite sofa. "Look and see."

Lucifer types in the PIN code. Beatrice's birthday. 1204. Static makes the screen flicker before resolving sharply to an open video. He hits play. 

"Hey, Lucifer," the Detective says, her eyes wet as she grins through the pixels at him. "Hey. Amenadiel told us you were really really hurt but healing." She swallows thickly, scrubbing at her grief-stricken face. "I wish I could come see you, but I get why not. Just know I'm thinking about you, and I hope you see this sometime soo— _oof_."

"Hi, Lucifer!" says the child, dive-bombing the picture from outside the frame like a beaching whale. "I sent you another slice of cake. Mom says I shouldn't eat junk when I'm sick but it always makes me feel better, and you say we should do what we—hey!"

The Detective snatches back the iPad and scolds the child, now out of frame again, "Monkey, I thought you were supposed to be in bed."

"But—"

The Detective points, one finger gracefully outstretched. "Go. Now. I'll let you record a message to him tomorrow, yeah?"

The child looses a suffering sigh. "Fine."

Woeful stomps recede into silence. The roar of a sliding door follows. 

The Detective warmly regards the screen again. "As you can see, you've made an indelible impression." He chuckles despite the pain it brings. She presses a palm to her chest. "I'm in your corner, Lucifer. Always. And I want you to have this. There are pictures and stuff if you ever need them. I know you're not very sentimental, but I thought, maybe—" Her voice cracks, and she halts, swallowing repeatedly like she might burst into tears. "I was a little worried about electricity in Hell, but Amenadiel told me you can turn anything on."

Across the coffee table, Amenadiel snorts with soft amusement, taking a sip from his glass.

"Good luck, okay?" the Detective finishes, her lower lip trembling as she stares directly into the camera. Her final, "I love you very much," is hoarse and barely intelligible. "I hope you don't mind if I pray to you now and then."

Playback ends, the picture freezing on her perfect face. Lucifer rubs a thumb down the screen, tracing her expression, memorizing every pixel. When he navigates away from that video, he sees more, each recorded after he'd left. Weeks' worth of footage, from the Detective. From Beatrice, Dr. Linda, Daniel, Ms. Lopez. Bloody hell, even Mazikeen. His earthbound family. 

All of them.

There's even an album labeled Thanksgiving 2019, now come and gone.

His chest tightens like someone wrapped a corset around his heart and tugged the slack from all the laces. The iPad—the back now warm from rendering video—carves a hard, sharp edge against his palm. 

"Why would you bring this to me?" Lucifer asks, shoving the device across the cushions, away from his aching body.

"I'm … sorry?" Amenadiel boggles. "I thought you'd like it."

"Like it," Lucifer scoffs. "It's a _knife_ in my heart." He wobbles to his feet, the room spinning like planets around his head. " _Why_ would you remind me of what I cannot have. Or was that the bloody point? To punish your evil brother for his audacity."

"No. No, of course not." Amenadiel sounds … almost genuine beneath his bafflement. "Luci, I'm sorry. I assumed you'd go back now."

" _How_. How can I go back?"

"I'm here."

"You imply you would take shifts with me?"

"I'm not implying anything. I'm saying it. That's why I came to Hell before." _And you killed me for it_ , he doesn't add. "I thought Chloe told you."

"No."

"No, she didn't tell you?"

Lucifer drags shaking fingers through his hair. "No, I cannot …." He paces. "I cannot even fathom …." His hip bumps his piano, and he mindlessly ricochets in a new direction. "Even if we traded places every bloody Earth day … that's, what, decades here for hours there?" The constant whiplash of leaving her … "Brother, it would break me. I barely left twice, let alone _infinite_ "—Amenadiel steps into his path, stopping him with a fierce but warm grip—"ly."

"So, don't trade every day," Amenadiel says with a shrug. "Don't come back until you're ready."

"But what about you?"

"This place isn't gonna fall apart in fifty or sixty years, Luci. That's a drop in the bucket of time, like you said."

"The demons still need supervision."

"Then we'll supervise," Amenadiel assures him _. "_ We'll check Hell every few weeks to remind them we're here—they made it more than eight Earth years before without openly defying you, remember—and we can always do flybys to confirm none have escaped. Maybe John would aid us."

" _John_ ," Lucifer scoffs.

"Yes. John. Chloe told me how he helped you guys."

"Helped is a strong word."

"Whatever word you want to use, then. Luci, this isn't the problem you're making it out to be."

"No."

"Don't you want to return to Earth?"

" _Yes_ ," Lucifer admits, his vision blurring. He cups a palm over his eyes, his voice threatening to give out as he admits, "That's the whole bloody problem."

"Luci—"

"No," he snaps, shuddering. 

"But Luci—"

" _No_. I'm knackered. Please, leave me be." 

He still has too much work to do. Miles to go before he sleeps, and all that. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. He shambles into his bedroom, not waiting for a reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting TWO chapters today. Be sure not to miss the next one!
> 
> If you'd like to listen to the song (So Many Roads, So Many Trains) Father Frank was singing, you can listen [here](https://open.spotify.com/track/34P2eLGGh6MqLHKCBGeuiD).


	51. "a way out"

Hell is paperwork.

Lots and lots of it.

As he's crossing the T in his name with an intricate curve of black ink, Zemiscion enters his office, the distant throb of bass, clink of glasses, and bevy of chatter from Lux crescendoing briefly into cacophony. The demon clutches a foot-thick sheaf of papers to her robes. 

"Ah," he says, looking up from the newest parole form Dr. Fawkes had sent. He fans the freshly signed parchment with his palm. "Done with the census?"

"Yes, my king." Zemiscion's voice is gravelly. 

"Anyone missing?"

Zemiscion bows, extending the papers across the desk. Each name and version of every soul in Hell, such as Adolf Hitler #49, is written in fine print, the words as tiny as Lucifer could Will onto the paper and have them be legible. Some names are scratched out, indicating they've moved up and on. Still, this sheaf only represents a fraction of Hell's formerly human denizens. Zemiscion had been bringing him sheafs this thick for years now. Decades. 

To accommodate Creation's guilty, Hell is colossal. One gargantuan landmass cushioned by a thin bubble of stars, unlike other realities, such as the Detective's, in which many small landmasses populate mostly emptiness.

"The Lilim have accounted for all souls pre-Cataclysm but one," Zemiscion says.

"Oh? Who?"

"Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, version four."

"And you've searched everywhere?" asks Lucifer.

The demon drops to the floor, prostrating herself. "Yes, my king. We have scoured high and low."

Lucifer leans forward, peering over the edge of his ornate desk. "Define high and low."

"No souls wander Demon Lands," she elaborates, talking to the floor. She's so thin her spine protrudes, adding a sharp, bumpy line to the back of her robe. "No Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin version four exists in a loop, or in your city, or anywhere we Lilim can reach. The Archangel Azrael confirmed this human never sought passage to the Realm Above."

"Hmm." Lucifer waves dismissively. "Very well, then; you may go."

She insists first on kissing his reconstituted onyx ring, but complies, and he's glad, in that moment, that none of them remember his humiliation. 

The throb of bass assaults him again as she exits. 

Why would Rasputin be gone? Specifically, the Rasputin who'd somehow been involved in Lucifer's enslavement. The only human Lucifer had ever locked—

Oh. Oh, no. Pieces assemble in the pain of hindsight that he hadn't previously considered relevant.

 _I'd sooner kill myself,_ Rasputin had admitted when pressed for details of any angel-killing capabilities.

_I'll rest soon, I think. I wish for … rest._

Lilith had intimated the enslavement spurse had devoured Mr. Lawson for fuel, and Lucifer hadn't detected a lie. Perhaps because her taunting had still been laden with truth. A soul _had_ been consumed.

Had Rasputin suicided, if only to escape the pain of repeating his sins, tragically not realizing he simply could have left? Lucifer thinks of the bloody palm prints marring Lilith's face as she'd departed Rasputin's loop. 

_Leave me, please,_ Grigori had said, gesturing toward the door. _I'm tired._

 _You_ can't _be tired,_ Lucifer had replied. _You're_ dead _._

Perhaps the spurse had already been snowballing to completion when Lucifer had intervened. Locking Rasputin inside his loop wouldn't have altered results except perhaps to hasten them.

The hypothesis … feels right.

And awful.

"Oh, Razzy," Lucifer says, poleaxed. He uncaps a bottle of his favorite Bowmore, refilling his glass. "If only I'd started my odyssey with you."

But if he had … would he have found a friend in Mr. Lawson? Or achieved closure with the Detective? Or discovered he had Will to shape his desires? Would he have reformed Hell?

Lucifer tips back the tumbler, letting the liquid burn down his throat. The overhead light seems to diffuse, his skin heating as the alcohol surges through him. The abiding ache in his chest deadens a little. His muscles—always tense to the point of pain—relax. His eyelids dip low over his irises as he takes another sip, and another, and another. 

_Would_ things have turned out differently if he'd chosen to pester Grigori Rasputin instead of Dennis Lawson?

He'll never know.

* * *

Lux _au_ Hell is full to bursting, the streets outside blooming with the bustle of unlife. More souls have arrived from Heaven, in search of something interesting. More have escaped their guilt prisons. Celeste Carr sits at the bar, sipping a club soda—Squee is branching out, slowly but surely. He's figured out scotch and vodka, rum and water—even ice, now, as well. He putters about, busily mixing drinks, offering a sympathetic ear and sage "advice" to those who would listen. 

"My king likes neat rusty nails in particular," he tells Ms. Carr. "Would you like one?"

"What's a neat rusty nail?" asks Ms. Carr, sniffling.

"A rusty nail with just the scotch." 

Her bloodshot eyes, streaked with running mascara, enhance her dazed, perplexed expression. "Isn't that just scotch?" 

"Is this not what I said?"

Ms. Carr's bafflement only seems to deepen, but at least she's there. Out and about. Listening to fine music. Having a bloody drink. The rest will come eventually.

"To a job well done," Lucifer says, watching the scene unfold over the hood of the piano. He picks up his "neat rusty nail" and clinks the glass to Father Frank's. They sit on the bench, shoulders touching. "I admit, I doubted you."

Father Frank smirks. "Hey, just because _you_ have no luck."

"Yes, well," Lucifer says with a soft scoff. He stares into the amber-colored liquid, watching the lights shimmer against the surface. "Turns out not many humans respond positively to my brand of scathing directness when it's telling them they're wrong." 

"That's okay, you know."

"What is?"

Father Frank shrugs, playing arpeggios to warm up his fingers. "Not everyone has the same path. We're not meant to."

"Oh, the 'Plan,' is it?" Lucifer asks, utilizing air quotes. "You still think Dad has some epic 'Great Design' for me?" 

"I'm sure he does," replies Father Frank without hesitation.

Hmm. "Are you speaking hypothetically, or have you actually—"

"Just faith."

Ah. That word. It's a bitter, oily taste at the back of Lucifer's throat. He looks away, plinking idly at the keys, the clear tones of the hammers hitting strings barely audible over the surrounding chatter and laughter and profusion of minor vice. "And you've _faith_ , I take it," Lucifer says, "that I'm not meant to be demanding the guilty cease their useless navel gazing?"

"Right now?" Father Frank bumps his black-clad shoulder to Lucifer's. Their glasses slosh as their bodies sway. "I think you're meant to give me an actual bass line instead of"—he gestures vaguely at the keyboard—"whatever that is."

Laughter barks from Lucifer's lips. "Insolent little priest." 

"You love it," replies Frank.

Lucifer does, though he won't ever say. Improvising, he settles into a romping progression of low-pitched chords. Frank nods along for a few bars, his knee bouncing out the beat, and then the melody flows from his fingertips like wine. They play for hours, drinking, talking, well into the early morning, long after Ms. Carr has returned to her apartment in Hellywood Hills.

* * *

Despite Father Frank's assertion, Lucifer still tries to repeat his success with Mr. Lawson from time to time. When being himself doesn't seem to work, he emulates Charlotte's sharp prosecutorial method, Father Frank's quiet way of listening, even Mr. Lawson's everyday empathetic Joe act. But his impatience invariably manifests whenever there's a setback. He finds himself spending the bulk of his time entertaining the exponentially burgeoning crowds at Lux au Hell. Fun at first but not forever. 

Ennui wraps around him, thick and strangulating like a hangman's noose. Loneliness, too.

He tries not to think of the Detective's iPad, stuffed now in his safe, behind bullion and ledgers. Or how he'd been better suited for punishing. 

He _enjoys_ punishing. Enjoys catching bad guys before they do more bad things. Enjoys hearing the Detective praise him when he's done something particularly clever. Enjoys the way she smiles, and talks to him, and fills his life with light. 

All right, perhaps the punishing isn't what he misses. 

He can imagine teaming up with her here, playing off her, to shepherd the guilty out of their loops. In that context, he might have more success, experience more fulfillment.

"You should go, Lucifer," Charlotte says, her heels clicking on the tiles as she steps onto the balcony with him. 

"Go where?" he asks, tensing.

She rests her head on his shoulder, her hair spilling against his suit. "Home. Go home. To Earth." 

A cool ocean breeze billows over the railing. He wraps his arm around her reflexively, inhaling the soothing scent of salt. She's an old friend, now. 

"I can't go back," he says. "I can't."

"Why can't you?" she asks, direct, staring.

"I need to be here."

"We can manage without you, you know. This place practically runs itself, these days."

"But—"

She cups his cheeks. "Lucifer. Everything will still be here when you're ready to return."

"But I am not _finished_ ," he replies, gritting out the words.

"What haven't you finished?"

That's the problem, though. 

He doesn't know.

He cranes his head back, staring at his stars. His chest hurts again, pounding with each heartbeat. He clutches a palm to his breast pocket, trying to breathe.

He can't breathe.

 _I want to be good,_ he'd thought when he'd birthed this place. 

Is he bloody good, now?

And if he left—abandoned his Creation—what would he be, then?

Good? 

Or something else?

* * *

"Please," the man begs, kneeling at Lucifer's feet like a supplicant, "please, this is _torture_."

Lucifer glowers downward. "I assure you, Mr. Cunningham, this is _not_ torture."

"It _is_ ," whines Cunningham, a six-foot-nothing, red-haired psychopath. "Therapy this, therapy that. Every day. In and out. It's _awful_. I can't take it anymore"

Lucifer exchanges a look with Dr. Fawkes. The Doctor shakes his head, his expression grave.

Lucifer has visited Dr. Fawkes once monthly for an update since the mental institution's inception. Normally, the trip is uneventful. Paroles happen, but not often—they're difficult to achieve, particularly in human souls, who, before humane treatment, were tortured for eons, and before that, were already broken by design. 

Mr. Cunningham is a new resident, unaware of Hell's history. He'd been killed via lethal injection, after his serial slaughter spree had resulted in dozens of deaths. He was remorseless, noped here by Raguel. 

Lucifer grabs Mr. Cunningham's collar, dragging him to his feet. The man kicks and squirms like a hellcat, until Lucifer tightens his grip, digging into bone. Cunningham tries to slip into incorporeal form, but with an injection of Will, Lucifer subdues him, freezing him in a solid state. The small application of power causes only twinges of discomfort.

"I think, Ronnie," Lucifer bites out, letting his eyes burn with damnation, "you owe it to your victims to try a bit more than _not at all_ , don't you?"

"How much more?"

"Let's say you give me a lifetime of effort for each life you took. An eye for an eye. I'm feeling … _Biblical._ "

"And then what?" warbles Mr. Cunningham. "Will you let me go?"

"Unluckily for you," Lucifer taunts, grinning enough to show teeth, "I've millennia to decide. Enjoy the uncertainty, and perhaps in the meantime you can learn to function without impinging the free will of others."

He tosses Mr. Cunningham against the wall, where he impacts, tumbles to the floor, and lands in a heap like a discarded shirt. Frissons of thrill rollercoaster through Lucifer's veins. Punishment. He doesn't do it often anymore, but it's still his forte.

"See you next month," he tells Dr. Fawkes in a mild tone. 

Dr. Fawkes nods. "Can we get—"

"Right, right," Lucifer says, pausing. Dr. Fawkes had asked for oil-based paints. Bristled brushes. Blank canvases. "Apologies. I'll have Zemiscion bring you fresh supplies at first opportunity." 

"Thank you!"

Lucifer nods, flying away before Dr. Fawkes can drag Lucifer into another boring conversation. Mr. Cunningham's words reverberate in Lucifer's ears as he rides the updrafts back to Hell A.

_And then what?_

Good question. Part of Lucifer's desire to reform Hell had been born from the idea no punishment should be eternal. That concept includes Mr. Cunningham, eventually. What "after punishment" can Lucifer offer those without hope of reform? No _desire_ to reform? Tired souls like Rasputin Four, who've paid their dues, and simply wish their struggles to cease. 

Perhaps this is why Lucifer doesn't feel finished.

There is no identifiable End.

* * *

They stand on the beach at the edge of Hell A. The water, bright like a phosphorescent tide, contrasts hauntingly with the blackening sky. Waves gurgle at their feet, immaculate white silica climbing into the gaps between their toes. 

"When ya gonna start callin' me Dennis, man?" Mr. Lawson asks, brushing sand from his board shorts. 

Lucifer regards him. "You prefer Dennis?"

"I feel we've reached a level of familiarity, y'know?" says Mr. Lawson. "So, yeah, call me Dennis. Or Denny."

"Not Denny. I refuse to call _anyone_ I like _Denny_."

Dennis laughs, his joyousness a boomerang, snapping back on Lucifer, too. Some of the gnawing ache in Lucifer's chest eases. 

"What's funny?" asks Lucifer.

"Dennis and the Devil. Sounds like a sitcom."

"Perhaps it is, though I would demand first billing."

Dennis snorts, leaning back, his eyes closing as he inhales the whipping wind. Gulls cry overhead, even in the twilight. The soothing, repeated crash of waves, like white noise, fills Lucifer's ears, and he tips his head back, too. Breathes. 

Is. 

"This place really is beautiful, y'know," says Dennis. "Though now I wanna learn how to surf."

"Then you should," Lucifer suggests. Surely, there's a guilty-minded surfing instructor somewhere.

Dennis folds his arms. "Okay, what's with the look?"

"What look?"

"You got a look just now. Ya don't have 'looks' that often anymore. Not like before."

 _Before_. The ache burgeons again. "I've ... no idea what you mean."

"You had a friend who surfed," Dennis decides. "Didn'tcha. From your Earth time. Ya look like that when you're thinkin' of 'em."

Lucifer looses a wry, soft laugh, remembering Daniel, who'd probably die of apoplexy if he ever discovered Charlotte's hellish detour. Or, perhaps, he'd be happy for the company when he dies. "Friend is … somewhat of a stretch."

He tries to push away thoughts of the Detective again. _I'm Team Lucifer all the way, yeah?_

He drags a fist to his chest, clutching at the buttons of his waistcoat, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. 

_Please, don't go,_ she'd said. _I don't care if it's selfish._

"Lucifer."

The Technicolor memory ricochets across the ocean, fading. " _What_?" he grits out, staring longingly into the water, fighting not to reach for a figment of his imagination.

"Remember what I toldja before?" Dennis prods. 

"You'll have to be more specific."

He claps his hands together, forming one fist, which he shakes. "Don't stop lookin' for a way out, just cuz ya think there ain't one."

"Why do you assume I need to escape?" Lucifer asks with forced calm.

Dennis regards him, his blue eyes searching, a "look" of his own creasing his features. "Y'made it real nice—ya did. That don't mean it's where ya live."

The ache is devouring. Lucifer's fingers shake as he picks at his buttons. Fiddles with his ring. But he doesn't reply.

He can't.

* * *

The idea doesn't come to him immediately.

The idea doesn't even come "soon."

A thousand or more visits to the mental institution pass into Hellish history by the time epiphany arrives. The answer's been there for millennia, unrecognized. It's a haunting, out-of-tune melody calling to him, a siren song. 

_Will you play it again?_ Squee had once said. _I want to be killed just like you._

Lucifer visits Lilith's room for the first time since the first time. Her broken soul hovers where he'd left it. In the corner, alone and forgotten. 

Except by him.

She'd been vibrant, once. Kind. Until God had condemned her for having too much sex, for being too uppity and rebellious. For _defiance_. Like a female Lucifer. But she hadn't had the benefit of angelic constitution. 

She can't try to fix herself, not like the lazy psychopathic Mr. Cunningham could. No, she's one of those vegetable humans languishing at the hospital, kept alive for those left behind. 

For him. 

_Please,_ she'd begged him once, long ago. _Please, end me, my king. I can feel it slipping, and it scares me._

 _It?_ he'd asked. _What is it?_

_Whatever makes me me._

He holds a picture in his mind. A desire. The ache begins behind his sternum, fiery streaks of agony rocketing to his fingertips and toes. The thing he longs for. Bitterly. His muscles contract in quick succession, the pain blotting the room from his perception. Crying out, he braces against the wall. A cold metal grip fills his grasping fingers where before there'd been nothing.

 _I want you to love me,_ she'd demanded.

When the memories cease howling in his ears, he opens his eyes. The blade is small, perhaps a foot long, its hue like sterling silver, but … not. The metal glows sickly strange, warning of the soul-sapping power housed within. They call it Azrael's blade, but it was his before hers, and now it's his again. 

He performs no ritual.

Says no words.

As soon as the sword penetrates the red-black layer of Lilith's soul, the cycle of destruction completes. She crumples inward, imploding around the knife point, until she's gone like she never was, not even a smear to stain the blade. 

But he remembers. 

_Will you tell me what it's like?_ she'd asked him once, as they'd sat by the acidic shores of the Acheron.

 _What what's like?_ he'd replied.

_Heaven._

_Oh, you'd loathe it. Never you worry._

_Why?_

_Because it's for the dead,_ he'd said. _Of will, of body. And we are neither. You've a fire in you, Lilith. Don't let it burn out._

She'd rested her head on his shoulder. _I won't if you won't, my king._

Something black and bitter and cold hollows his gut. His vision blurs, a sniff bubbling wetly in his nose. His fingers clench and unclench around the hilt of the blade. His teeth mash together as he works his jaw, fighting and fighting not to vomit. 

"Am I good now?" he asks softly. "Dad …?"

Of course, no answer. 

He takes the sword and hides it in a rune-locked chest, stored on the highest peak, at the farthest reach. An End, should it be needed, though he hopes not often, if ever. 

He doesn't enjoy playing God.

Perhaps Dad hadn't either, and that was why he'd stopped.

* * *

Lights from his living room slant through the sliders onto the balcony floor, and he cringes several-hundred feet out from the railing. The memory of the blade won't dissipate, and he can't stop watching Lilith die, the croaked whisper at the end of a scream, whenever he closes his eyes. He doesn't want to talk to his friends. Not Charlotte or Dennis, not Father Frank. He wants to climb into bed and never leave again, not until the hammer pounding him to dust gives up.

But his clan of Hellish kindred aren't waiting for him. When he lands, he squints at the bespectacled blond woman perched on his couch. How had a loop figment gotten into his penthouse? Except then he realizes the apparition has a soul, and she isn't corporealized. She's living.

He grips the slider. "Doctor Linda. I. I-I. What are you _doing_ here?"

"Amenadiel brought me." 

"Well, he should bloody know better," Lucifer snaps, recovering. He tromps across the floor, snatching the half-empty wineglass from her hands. "You shouldn't _be_ here. You'll be geriatric before Charlie's old enough to fly—assuming a demon doesn't eviscerate you first. They behave, mostly, but only because it's pointless not to. Can't torture a soul who's only corporeal when it chooses. But they'll sniff you out like sharks. I can't believe Amenadiel would—"

A small, warm hand grips his wrist as he tries to shunt the wineglass into the sink at the bar. He shuts his eyes, trying to pretend she isn't there. But her hands are too solid, her intent too directed. 

"I'm not planning to stay long," Dr. Linda assures him, "and I promise, I won't wander."

"Then what _are_ you planning?"

The hand tightens around his wrist. "To tell you to come home."

He scoffs, yanking away. "That's not terribly therapist-like, is it? Aren't you supposed to guide me into my own enlightenment or some such?"

"So, you do pay attention."

"Of course I do. I always have."

She leans against the bar, her forehead only coming to his chest level. He'd forgotten how short she is. How vital and breathing and beautiful she—

"Lucifer, I don't have time today for you to intentionally misinterpret me," she tells him, "and I'm here as your friend, not your therapist. I'm here as someone who loves you."

 _You should not love, my king,_ Lilith had said. _It never ends well._

"The way Amenadiel explains, this place is running beautifully. Humans are helping themselves in droves. Demons have their own space. Corporealization mechanics ensure any interactions between the two are voluntary. There's no need for you to _be_ here." Dr. Linda looks up at him, her dark eyes warm, her heartbeat pounding—he'd forgotten what it's like to be near someone alive. "So, why aren't you letting yourself come home? Didn't you promise Chloe you'd return if it was feasible?" 

The wineglass cracks when he grips it too hard. "I can't."

"Why can't you."

"Becauseit's _not_ feasible," he insists.

She's quiet. Observing. He drops the glass bits and presses his palms to his face, breathing through his fingers, trying not to think of Lilith dying, and dying again, and again. Of him _ending_ her, like he'd ended Uriel. Forever.

"Lucifer, do you think, maybe, you're still punishing yourself?" Dr. Linda asks.

"I … no." He peers over his fingertips at her. "No, that's not—that's preposterous."

"Is it?"

"Yes!" 

She nods slowly. "It can be really easy to fall into old patterns of behavior, particularly when one isn't attending sessions regularly. When one isn't seeking help, or being pushed to self-reflect."

"Well, this isn't that."

"What is it, then?"

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, opening and closing his mouth as no adequate answers form. What … _is_ this _?_ Lilith dies, and dies again. He rubs the bridge of his nose, weary. Why today? Why had Dr. Linda bloody well come _today_. It's like she'd bloody _known_.

"Lucifer. Your gift is desire, right?" Dr. Linda says. 

"What of it?" he grits out.

"What do you desire for yourself?" 

He fights back a swell of nausea. "I … want to be good."

"But you already _are_ good, Lucifer. You're a good man. One of the best men I know."

"I don't feel good," he admits. "I don't …."

"Lucifer, sometimes—often times—what we feel and what we are are not at all congruent, particularly after trauma. Anxiety twists things up. Depression tells us lies. But _I_ won't lie, and I'm not lying to you now. You. Are. Good."

"But—"

"Come back to Earth," she presses, "and we can explore these feelings together, okay? I'll help you. I'm _happy_ to. And who says you can't be good if you're with Chloe?"

"Doctor, _I_ do," he says, pulling away from the bar to pace around his piano. Words form—feelings he hasn't been able to sort with any kind of fluency before. The crux. "What sort of an angel would I be if I left now, abandoning my project in its infancy? I cannot simply say, 'Goodbye! Fly free, or fall on your face. Makes no bloody difference to me.' It _does_ make a difference to me—I don't abandon what I've made. I don't _discard—_ " He pauses by the rear of the piano, clenching his fists as a vile, virulent whorl of frustration incinerates his insides. "I've no wish to be my dad. I've just had another taste of that today, and it was _awful_."

"Do you _want_ to be with Chloe?" Dr. Linda counters.

"Of course I do, but what I desire, and what I can—what I _should_ have—are different—"

"They aren't, Luci," Amenadiel says, sweeping down the small flight of steps from Lucifer's bedroom.

Lucifer glares. "Eavesdropping, Brother?"

"Yes."

"Well, points for honesty, I supp—what are you doing?"

As Amenadiel strides closer, he arrays his hands before his torso as if he were holding a phantom basketball. "Fixing the one thing you couldn't."

"What—" 

"You don't mind if I step in, right? Like we discussed?" Amenadiel asks Dr. Linda. "I think I can field this."

"Oh, no," Dr. Linda replies, offering an _after you_ gesture, "by all means."

"Doctor?" says Lucifer. 

Amenadiel's fingers flex inward. He grits his teeth, strain pearling his forehead with sweat. His tendons bulge and his muscles tremble. 

"Now, who looks constipated," Lucifer snarks.

A groan of exertion rakes Amenadiel's throat.

"Uh. Brother?"

There's a pop, like a miniature sonic boom. A shockwave rolls outward, though it seems physically to hit nothing. And then stillness, save for Amenadiel's ragged panting.

 _Stillness_.

Dr. Linda, who before had been walking toward the piano, is frozen mid-stride. Well, not _frozen_ , frozen. But moving slowly enough to look it. Her right arm remains outstretched, her lips contorted around a word she'd never had opportunity to speak. 

Lucifer gapes. "How the bloody hell did you—"

"My power returned. No idea if you resurrected me with it or if it's been here all along, waiting for me to actually want it, but … Charlie knocked a glass off the table last night, and I stopped it mid-air." Amenadiel glances around. Not a temporary fix, from the looks of it, but a permanent one. "Next time you pass through a dimensional gate, you'll be in sync with everything."

"Yes, thank you, I _know_."

"You don't mind the change, do you?"

"Mind? Why would I mind you fiddling with time?" 

"Sharing credit? Your project?"

The frustration boils over. "I never needed acclaim, Brother. Pride was _never_ what this was—"

"You're right," Amenadiel says, holding up his hands. "Sorry. Old habits."

Lucifer chooses not to retort.

"So, when do you start commuting?" asks Amenadiel.

"Pardon?"

"Time in Hell now passes at a one-to-one ratio with Earth. A day here is a day there. No more, no less. You can commute like the rest of humanity—Hell won't fall apart if you go home for dinner every night, or take an occasional vacation to Aruba."

"Amenadiel, I—"

"Come _on_ , Luci," he says, almost laughing with frustration. "You might not want to listen to the humans, but you can damned well listen to _me_."

"The humans," Lucifer boggles faintly. "What have the humans—"

"We've only been trying to nudge you for _centuries._ But if that won't work, how about _scathing directness telling you you're wrong_." Amenadiel points to the slider. "There's the door, Brother. Go." 

Oh. Bloody hell. Bloody _hell._

"What excuses can you possibly have left?" demands his brother.

None.

None at all.

Lucifer can go _home_.

"Do I have to drag you out like Mom did?" Amenadiel threatens when Lucifer remains motionless. "I will if you make me."

"How long has it been?" he asks. He'd lost track. Dr. Linda doesn't seem much older, but, "Is she …? Is the Detective still …?" Alive? Well? 

Amenadiel's gaze softens. "Luci, the only reason I didn't bring her here instead of Linda is because I wanted you to listen, not flip out."

 _I love you,_ she'd said. _I choose you._

And Lucifer can't breathe. He can't _breathe_.

"I want to be good," he says. "I want—"

"You ever notice," Amenadiel says, stepping closer, "how this place doesn't suddenly rearrange on its foundation whenever you say that?"

"What."

"Isn't that proof enough? You're clearly checking the box on bitter yearning." 

Like the spurse. 

Nothing changes when a desire is already true. 

"Go, Luci," Amenadiel urges. "Go home."

Lucifer has too many emotions to sort them properly. The room wavers. 

_I don't think it's ever too late to do the right thing,_ she'd said.

"Amenadiel." His voice is small.

"Go," his brother repeats, folding his arms. "Go be with Chloe. I'll bring Linda along in a sec."

Home.

 _Home_.

Lucifer spreads his wings, the feathers shivering with much too much. He wobbles to the balcony, taking one long lingering look at spectral, spectacular Hell A. And then he flies to the gate that will take him home.

The gate that will set him free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, thank you to those who take the time to leave comments or kudos :)


	52. "better than very good"

"I still don't get why this is fun," Maze says.

Linda is on a date night with Amenadiel, and Dan is watching the kids at his place. Meanwhile, at Chloe's, game pieces and cards sprawl across the table and board—a grid of hexagonal spaces, each numbered. Wine glasses demarcate the game space into thirds, one each for Chloe, Maze, and Ella. 

"First to ten points wins," says Ella. 

"But why is it fun?" asks Maze.

"Winning isn't fun to you?"

"Why can't I attack shit?"

"Because it's a trading game."

"But no one will trade with me."

"Because you keep offering stuff nobody wants."

"But"—Maze licks her wine-colored lip suggestively—"I give the best quality wood."

Ella's argument dies in a chuffing little snigger. "Okay, stop—"

"I'll give you wood for sheep?" Maze presses, her leather pants creaking as she leans toward the table, showing off cleavage. "Wood to get your rocks off?"

A full-fledged laugh barks from Ella's lips. "Oh, God, this makes me wonder how X-rated this would be if we were playing with Lucif—" Ella's voice cuts off with a croak as she directs a stressed look at Chloe. "I mean, I mean … Lucy … fuuuh. Lucy Fullman. My other friend. Who. I have not yet introduced, but—"

"It's okay," Chloe mumbles, clutching her resource cards—a vast bouquet of wheat, sheep, and rocks—which the robber is one "lucky" roll away from stealing. "You can say his name. I'm not gonna fall apart."

"Sure." Ella nods too enthusiastically. "Right."

Maze flicks the top edges of her cards with nails painted glossy black, her enticed expression refusing to wane. "Ellen."

"What?"

"I'll give you wood for free."

Ella snorts, gracelessly spitting a sip of wine back into her glass as she giggles.

"What?" Maze challenges. "We ladies help each other out. Isn't that what you always say?"

"Oh, you _know—"_

The banter continues, but the words fade, and the game becomes a nondescript puddle of color. Chloe aches. Her body. Her mind. Her soul. 

"Chlo?" Ella says softly. "Seriously, you okay, babe?"

Chloe eyes burn as she tries to refocus. "I'm sorry, guys." She fans her cards onto the table, not caring as she displaces her stack of road pieces. "I'm just not into this tonight."

"Darn it; I _knew_ I shouldn't have said his name."

"Ella, it's not that."

"Wanna do something else?" Ella's expression brightens. "We could go bowling? Or mini-golfing? Something extra extremely not Lucifer-y?"

"No thanks; I'm just really tired," Chloe confesses, standing up, even as her head swims. 

He'd been gone over two months. And she's … okay. Okay in the sense of being a human dealing with loss. Her world isn't ended or anything. She'll survive Lucifer's departure like she's survived everything else—with time, and a life still full of love, even if it's not his. Knowing—understanding—why he's gone helps. 

But, God, she wishes she were at the part when she isn't suffering random crying jags over the littlest provocation. When she isn't tired all the fucking time. When her body doesn't hurt. When she can sleep and not be wracked by dreams of all her could-have-beens (if only). 

_If only_.

"You guys do whatever you want," she says. "Stay—finish up the wine, maybe, but … I need sleep."

"Sorry," Ella says. "I was really hoping this would help."

"It _did_ for a few hours," Chloe replies, a hurting lump expanding in her throat. "Really, I appreciate it." She rubs the bridge of her nose, her head pounding like gunfire at the range. "I just … hit my quota early, I guess. I can't think anymore." What thinking she could manage, she'd already done at work, and then with Trixie before Dan had picked her up. "It's too hard right now." 

"Yeah. Yeah, of course. No problem."

"We could throw knives," Maze decides. "Good stress relief. Doesn't need thinking."

Chloe offers a brittle smile. "Maybe not, but definitely sobriety." 

"Says you."

"Says most _sane_ people," Chloe counters.

"Sane is overrated."

Chloe's tired smile strengthens as she regards them. Her friends. Her Tribe. They'd been there for her through thick and thin. Now is definitely a thin time. But. "Thank you guys for coming. For keeping me company tonight. I mean it."

Ella slaps her cards down and stands, closing the distance between them. "Oh, c'mere, you."

Her embrace is warm. And firm. And _petite_. Too petite to ever pretend she's Lucifer. Chloe presses her nose against Ella's neck, trying not to wish she was him. Trying. 

"Want me to sleep with you tonight?" Ella offers. "Will that help?"

Maze snorts.

"You, shush," Ella snaps without bite. "I meant non-euphemistic sleep."

"Oh, clearly."

"Thanks, but no," Chloe says. "I just …." Want to lie in the dark, free from the prison of expectations or social constructs or the need to be _on_. "No."

"Okay," Ella says doubtfully. "If you're sure."

"I'm sure." Chloe pulls away, and Ella lowers her hands, her expression helpless and forlorn. 

"Night, Decker," adds Maze, almost nonchalant, though her voice catches on the last syllable, like she, too, is affected.

"Goodnight." Without lingering, Chloe heads to bed.

* * *

Ella and Maze don't stay long after Chloe leaves them in the living room. The front door latches and locks as Chloe's standing in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, staring at the mirror like she's a ghost in her own skin. _Oh, I felt nothing,_ he'd said. _Again_?

_Recite_ War and Peace _._

_No!_ He'd laughed, the sound beautiful after so much misery. _No, I will not._

And then she'd lost it. _Please, don't go. I don't care if it's selfish; I don't_ care _if there's demons—we'll take them as they come._

_Please, don't leave me again,_ she'd begged.

But he had anyway.

Left her.

She spits her toothpaste into the sink, only to realize as she vacates into her bedroom that the memory continues there, vivid and visceral. They'd been joined, a part of himself buried inside of her. He'd looked up at her, gripping her thighs like he'd thought he would fall without her. _Fuck me,_ he'd begged. _Please._

"No," she snaps aloud.

But his phantom can only wink.

Frustrated, she grabs her things and transfers to the guest room, which used to be his, but at least was never theirs. 

After putting fresh sheets on the bed, she climbs in. Except … no memories might be worse than too many. She tosses at the unfamiliar mattress. Turns at the weird way the streetlights slant through the blinds. 

She spreads a dab of his leftover cologne onto the pillowcase, hoping for a stopgap between insomnia and nightmares. The familiar scent of vanilla, sandalwood, and floral notes burgeons in her nose, soothing her. 

She picks up her phone and navigates to photos. 

New photos. Old photos. All of him. 

Her favorite is actually a series of selfies from before. Before Lilith, or Eve, or Candy. He'd commandeered her phone to mug and pose. His expression gleaming with amusement, he wears a blue waistcoat and suit that bring out the rich brown in his irises. She's just beyond his left shoulder, working intently at her desk. In the photo taken after the selfies, Lucifer is gone, replaced by her as she taps a pen to her lip and stares into space. Despite the precinct's ugly, soul-sucking fluorescent lighting, the way the sunlight plays against her face, bronzing her skin, turning her hair honey gold, illuminating the green in her eyes to brilliant emerald, makes it one of her favorite photos ever taken. She keeps that photo in the "Lucifer" gallery with the rest, since he's clearly the one who took it. 

What had he been thinking in that moment, staring at her through her camera lens, catching her in her best light? 

The phone vibrates, nearly skipping from her lax fingertips. Dan's grinning face flashes across the screen. At 10:42 p.m., according to the clock. 

"Hey, what's up?" Chloe asks, picking up. 

"Mom, I can't sleep," Trixie whines in a tiny voice.

"What's wrong, babe?"

"I don't know. I just can't. Dad's already in bed." She'd been having trouble since Lucifer had left again, though she hadn't ever blamed his absence. 

"Want me to read you a story?" Chloe asks, the covers rustling as she shifts onto her side.

"Do you think he's lonely?"

"Hmm?"

"Lucifer."

"Oh. Babe, I'm sure he has plenty of people keeping him company."

"You're _sure_?"

Not exactly.

Amenadiel hadn't been shy about relaying the status of Hell, now fixed and running smoothly, though he'd been mum about specifics, always begging off questions with some silly, awkward subject change. Like he thinks she can't handle the truth. 

Maybe she can't.

Maybe, the afterlife's not for the living to know.

Chloe's only aware Lucifer had been hurt badly enough to spend the first week— _years_ , for him—unconscious. He'd gotten better, but his convalescence had taken him almost a month of Earth time. Even if he'd been on Earth, that's too long. In Hell, with Hell time? It's horrific. Before, she'd only ever seen him take days to pick himself up following devastation.

"Mom?" Trixie asks, yanking Chloe from her spiral.

"Sorry," she says, rubbing her eyes with shaking fingers. "Mind wandered."

"Lucifer?"

"Yeah, babe." She rubs her chest where the aching knife of uncertainty had carved her hollow. 

Trixie sniffs. "I wish we could call him."

"Me, too."

"Maybe, we can mail him a cellphone?" Trixie suggests hopefully.

"I don't think so, babe. I don't think it would work where he is."

Trixie's glum exhalation blusters over the line. Chloe debates whether to suggest praying. For one, she's not sure Lucifer would appreciate it. But …. 

"Will you read _Coraline_ to me again?" Trixie asks.

Chloe smiles. " _Again_?" 

"It's my favorite."

"Okay, one sec." Chloe climbs out of bed. "Is it on your top shelf like usual?"

"Yeah."

* * *

This Lux is different. 

Lucifer isn't there, for one. A beak-nosed demon tends the bar, mixing a Cosmo for an average-looking man—brown hair, brown eyes, not tall, not short, not old, not young, overweight but not morbidly so, not even enough to call him fat. A man she knows, but never knew. Chloe hovers by the piano, disembodied, floating like a butterfly on the breeze. A wiry-haired brittle-boned old man plays a dreamy, melancholic piece. The gentle chatter of conversation and laughter fills the relative sedateness, but she's intent on the bar. 

"Is this what you desire?" rasps the waifish demon bartender as he pushes a glass filled with red liquid to his waiting customer.

The average-looking man takes a hesitant sip, swishing the liquid in his mouth. "Wow," he says, swallowing. "This is fantastic. The reviews didn't do it justice."

"I have been practicing for many years. One could say eternity, though that's not strictly truth."

"It shows. Thanks."

"You are welcome. My king prefers a thing called scotch, but I enjoy this mixture most."

"Oh?"

"Yes, the color is like blood. Also, it's yummy."

The man laughs. "Can't argue with that." He sips his drink. "You know, I gotta say, this is totally not what I expected."

"The drink?" asks the bartender, his beady eyes intent.

"No, I meant damnation. It's nice. Being able to help people like me. I tried when I was alive, but …." He grimaces, then chugs the whole glass, his Adam's apple rippling along his throat. "Eh. Never mind. I'm just … _really_ glad I'm here." He extends a palm across the bar. "Hey, listen, call me Al."

The bartender blinks. And blinks again. Slowly, he sets aside the triple sec and mirrors Al's motion with a gnarled, clawed hand. Al claps their palms together, gripping firmly. The demon flinches, but settles as his hand is dragged innocuously up and down. Up and down. 

"What is this gesture?" the demon asks, staring at the point of contact.

Al beams. "It's a handshake."

"No one has ever done this to me."

"First time for everything. Hey, have you seen that new blockbuster? The one with Heath Ledger? I don't have anyone to go with yet."

Beady eyes widen. "You wish to go … with me?"

"Sure, why n—"

"Better than very good, I'd say," interjects the old man playing the piano beside her. "Wouldn't you?"

Chloe startles, having forgotten he was there. But … how can he see her? She isn't here. This isn't _real_. This is just a desperate figment, produced by loss, by—

"Yes, I'm asking you, my dear," he says. "Would you not say this is better than very good?"

She turns to face the pianist. His spine is curved at the shoulders like he's spent his life hunching over a computer desk. Liver spots paint his skin, which is stretched thinly across a too visible skeleton. The milky hints of cataracts turn dark eyes pale. He must be … at _least_ ninety, if not a centenarian.

"Well?" he prods.

"I'm sorry, what?" she says. Or, maybe, thinks in his direction. She has no body, and by extension no mouth, so …? 

"An improvement," he replies. His voice is rich and booming, like someone accustomed to commanding the room. "Better than very good, not yet perfection?" 

"Uh. Okay. Sure?" 

"I'm glad to see it." He smiles wanly. "I thought perhaps I wouldn't. Free will is such a fickle thing." 

She frowns, drifting closer. "Who are you?"

"The relevant question, my dear, is who are you?" 

"Chloe," she finds herself answering. "Chloe Decker."

He gestures with a knobby, arthritic hand to the piano bench, inviting her to sit beside him. She does. 

"A lovely name," he decides, notes plinking gently as his other hand wanders the keyboard. "You do make everyone around you bloom. Just as he is my spark, you are my tinderbox, both parts equal in importance. Happily, finally, colliding despite all probability, and now we have a conflagration." The music ceases, and he tilts his head intently. "Interesting, isn't it?"

His shoulder-length shock of white hair frames a narrow, sharp-angled face. He seems … familiar. And yet not. And yet—

"This isn't how I look," he adds enigmatically. "I had to pick something you can process."

Suspicion ignites, burning into revelation. 

She sucks in a nonexistent breath.

"Are you …?" she asks. 

"I am," he confirms. "Are _you_?" 

" _God_?" 

"No, queen." He tips his aquiline nose at the piano. In place of the ash tray, a sliced pomegranate bursting with flesh and seeds sits on a porcelain plate. "When you perish, will you partake of the fruit? One seed for each month in Perdition. The flesh for your time in Paradise." 

She goggles.

"The choice is yours, of course," he continues, "as it always was and will be." His expression shifts, old eyes turning wistful. "But I would so love to know before I'm gone."

"Gone?" Fruit? _Choice?_ "Wait, what are you _talking_ about?"

He sighs, laughing gently. "You never did research what Chloe means, did you?"

"I've been kinda busy since Ella brought it up."

"You really should learn your mythology," he continues, not allowing excuses. "I don't add symbols to my writing just for kicks, you know. I want them to be appreciated." 

"But—" 

"While you're at it, look up Jane, too. That's a good one, if I do say so myself."

He grabs the plate from the piano, extending the pomegranate toward her. Juice rings the saucer, glistening in the light. 

"Well?" he prods.

She reaches, her fingers almost brushing his, but stops. "Why is everything about Lucifer's Fall so hinky? How come nobody remembers? Where did Michael go? What could Lucifer _possibly_ have done to make you so angry? And who the hell are _you_ to be such a—"

"My dear," he interrupts tiredly, "I would tell you." Something blossoms on his face. An unhappy emotion, but definitely not anger. It's jagged, dark, and festering. "But that's another story altogether, and this one's coming to an end."

Then she's whooshing down a tunnel. "Wait!" she shrieks as Lux shrinks to a pinpoint. "Wait, I want the pomegran—" 

Only to flinch awake to too bright lamplight and the sharp red glare of the guest room's alarm clock, silent in the night. Her heart pounds. _Coraline_ lies cracked open along the spine, the wrinkled pages pressed to Chloe's chest. Her phone call to Trixie—still connected hours later—filters soft, even breathing over the line.

Fuck. _Fuck._

"Night, babe," Chloe warbles, disconnecting the call before her grief turns her inarticulate.

Talk about wishful thinking.

Sniffling, she stacks the book onto her nightstand, and her phone onto the book. And then she's crying. Grieving. All over again. 

She's so overwrought, she nearly doesn't hear it. A soft knock at the front door. It's 3 a.m.

Who the hell knocks at 3 a.m.?

She pulls a pillow over her head, waiting to see if whoever it is will leave her to her misery. 

But another knock follows the first, this time more insistent. And then another. Gritting her teeth, she grabs her gun from the safe in her bedroom closet, and heads downstairs.

* * *

A dark figure fills the space beyond the peephole. She grips the pommel of her pistol, her finger off the trigger, the muzzle pointed away. "Who is it?" she calls tensely.

"Only me, Detective," is the soft, immediate response. 

With a gasp, she drops her weapon, flips on the front light, grabs at the deadbolt, scrambling to unlock it, and then yanks the chain off the hook. Brisk night air slaps her face as she pulls open the door. He stands on the stoop, wearing gray pants and an indigo shirt—both wrinkled—along with black scuffed Louboutins. No jacket or waistcoat adorns his shoulders. His hair is anything but coiffed, almost like he'd been yanking on it in his anxiety. His dark, old eyes scream of memories, cutting like razors, just like hers. His face is pallid and unshaven, his frame gaunt. 

"You're okay," she gushes, only to shake her head. "I mean … obviously not _okay,_ okay, but in one piece, and …." Her voice trails away. "Hi."

A smile flickers across his face. "Hello, Detective."

"Hi _,_ " she repeats uselessly, almost a sob, as she leans against the door, the knob poking into her hip. " _Hi_."

What to say? Her mouth is suddenly dry. The cold air makes her shiver. Or is that him doing that. Or …? 

She tugs closed the ribbed collar of her ratty bathrobe, aware she's wearing nothing but that, a t-shirt worn through with holes, and coffee-stained cotton pants. Still, he regards her as though she'd answered the door sporting an evening gown.

A orchestra of crickets fills the quiet. He shifts on his feet. 

"You," he asks, "you said you'd accept a commuting Devil?" The words are rough, croaked. He clears his throat as if fighting dissolution. "You did say that, yes? I wasn't dreaming?"

_Please, don't go back to Hell when this is over. At least, not permanently. You could commute or … take shifts,_ she'd said. Begged. The memory sears her like a broiler.

"You weren't dreaming," she confirms softly. 

His lower lip trembles, but he doesn't speak. Maybe he's just as lost for words as she is.

"Why didn't you just come in?" she asks.

A moth converges on the light, bonking into the illuminated surface. Lucifer doesn't twitch, not even as the insect flits by his harrowed face. Instead, he peers at the mat, scuffed and mud-speckled beneath his feet. _Welcome!_ it proclaims in cursive white lettering.

"I," he admits, pointing, "wasn't certain this applied to me anymore." 

A shaky sigh-slash-laugh gusts out of her. Her vision blurs, blotting his features behind a wet wall of much too much.

"Am I?" He looks up again. "Am I still welcome, Detective?"

"Oh, shut up." She reaches across the threshold to clutch a fistful of his shirt. "Of course you are." And she pulls him inside with her, into her arms as she bangs the door shut with her hip. "Of _course_ you are, Lucifer."

"I'm … not too late?" Like he really thought he'd fucked it all up, this time. 

"Shut up," she repeats against his chest, her eyes overflowing as she hugs him so fiercely her muscles shake. She clutches at the nape of his neck, running her fingers through his hair, feeling every sharp angle, smooth curve, and hard line. "Shut up. Shut up. Of course you're not too late."

"You … wouldn't mind if I," he says, small and overwrought, "commuted?" 

"Of course I wouldn't."

He's quiet, then. Trembling. Breathing softly. Pressing his nose against her hair like he's never smelled something so lovely. His arms, last to the party, wrap low across her spine, his hands linking, and he pulls her close.

She has questions. So many things she wants to say. But not one iota of it matters immediately, not as long as he's here.

As long as he's hers.

She rises onto her tiptoes and presses her lips chastely to his. He has a taste. He's _real_.

"I've missed you," she says, marveling as she pets his cheekbones, and his eyebrows. His nose, and the warm cartilage of his ears. His jawline. The pulsepoint at his throat, heavily pounding under a sharp swath of stubble. Real. All real. "I've missed you so much."

"Am I allowed to speak yet?" he replies, enduring her appraisal.

She laughs, more buoyant than she's felt in months. His haunted eyes crinkle at the edges, erasing some of his weariness. She rubs her thumbs across his eyelashes, cupping his face, inviting the present day sensory explosion to overwrite a past she'd thought permanently historic, and then she kisses him again. And again. And again. 

"You look tired," she says, lingering by his lips.

"As do you," he replies.

"How long's it been for you?"

"A millennium, at least. How long here?"

"About ten weeks."

He nods a little, bafflement flashing across his features, like he can't quite reconcile the eternity of Hell with the brevity of Earth. Another kiss. Real. So, so very real.

"Let's not do that again, okay?" she says, crying.

He closes his eyes, his fingers clenching against her bathrobe as he clings to her. "No, Detective. Never."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everybody who takes the time to leave comments or kudos :) I really appreciate it!


	53. "shagging and snogging"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a little late. One of those mornings.
> 
> P.S. Here be kinks. Brace yourself :D

Chloe wakes to hazy gray. Rain streams down the windowpane in shimmering rivulets, slapping the pavement as it spills from the gutters. Petrichor fills her nose, floating on wet air through the small crack she always leaves at the windowsill for ventilation. Soothed, hypnotized, she pulls her pillow over her head, curling under the blankets. 

A minute passes.

She drifts, listening. Rainfall against the roof is one of her favorite sounds, the scent, a favorite smell. Living in Los Angeles has—

Wait.

Blindly, she flops a hand across the mattress, searching but finding only cool sheets. "Lucifer?"

No answer.

She snaps upright, tossing away her pillow and blankets. The clock reads almost noon. "Lucifer!" she bleats uselessly into the empty room. He isn't there.

He isn't _there_.

Her innards sink like her torso has no floor. Had she been dreaming the night before? Had he _left_? She scrambles out of bed, flying into the hallway, only to skid to a halt. 

Bacon and coffee replace the scent of petrichor. The distant sizzle and hiss of meat in the frying pan—the bubble and boil of coffee percolating—mingles with the sound of rain. The indigo-blue shirt he'd been wearing hangs neatly from her bathroom doorknob, the gray pants, slung over the towel rack, crisply folded along the pleats.

Her eyes prickle.

She grips the stair railing with shaking hands and descends. He's there, in the kitchen, bare-legged and sleep-mussed, donning the black silk lounge robe they'd bought for him when he'd been her slave. She'd never had the heart to discard his possessions, instead leaving them not forgotten so much as enshrined in the guest room closet—he seems to have found them without trouble. 

"Morning," he says, smiling almost shyly as she takes a seat at the table. He points a grease-slicked spatula at her. "I see you've fixed the kitchen and dining area. Has Simon reimbursed you? I like the new tile. Quite sleek."

Or quite black. And featureless.

But maybe he's babbling.

The Devil. Babbling.

"Yeah," she says, "he sent me a check." A _huge_ check. Enough to remodel her kitchen, buy a dinette set, pay for Lucifer's MRI and eliminate her remaining credit card balance, fund Trixie's future college enrollment, and still have enough left over to double Chloe's nest egg for retirement. She'd tried to return the excess, but after a while, Simon had stopped laughing her off politely, and ceased taking her calls instead. "Thank you."

"Of course."

She cups her chin in her hands. Lucifer nudges the bacon in the pan, then flips a pancake on the neighboring griddle. Out of his suit, his gauntness is even more apparent, sculpted muscles replaced by barely more than skin and bone. The dark smudges hugging his eyes are bruised smears. Like he's still healing centuries later. Or, maybe, he'd hit a plateau he couldn't surpass as his environment had sapped more vibrancy and _joie de vivre_ than he could replace.

They'd talked that morning. They'd talked for hours, into the first gray hints of dawn, when she'd stopped making sense between jaw-cracking yawns, and he'd actually fallen asleep mid-sentence. They'd crashed into bed shortly after.

But before, he'd told her what he'd made. He'd told her of Lux au Hell, and Hell Angeles—a halfway house for the damned to "reorientate." He'd told her of seeing Charlotte, Dennis, and Father Frank again, too.

 _People can just leave Heaven and come to Hell whenever they want?_ she'd asked.

 _And vice versa,_ Lucifer had replied, _if they've sufficiently dealt with their guilt._

Though his smile had crinkled his eyes—genuine joy at recollections of formerly lost friends, of guilt-cloistered humans freeing themselves—he'd seemed hollow. Weary. Like, for all his marvelous work offering the afterlife a needed paradigm shift, he still only saw Hell as a duty, not a home. Not without its most critical component.

Her.

She, Chloe Decker, is Lucifer Morningstar's home. 

How that had happened, she'll never know.

But, "I'm really glad you're here," she gushes as he scoops a golden-brown pancake from the griddle and dumps it onto a plate. "I'm really glad you came back."

"That desperate for the perfect pancake, are we?" he replies, grinning over his shoulder at her.

"No," she says, "just you."

He turns off the stove burners, transferring giant piles of perfect pancakes and bacon to her new table, along with syrup, fresh coffee, and orange juice. He sits not across from her, but at the chair perpendicular, then scoots it closer, until barely inches separate them. 

He sighs, his eyelids drooping to half-mast, his body relaxed and languid beside her, like, really, all he's wanted to do for millennia is be here, sitting next to her while she eats. She bypasses the food and coffee, instead snaking her hand across the table to his. Clutching his palm, she strokes each knuckle, each crease. His fingers flex around hers.

"Still really real," she confirms quietly. 

"Indeed," he murmurs, leaning close.

The rain pounds.

He presses his cheek to hers, nuzzling. Then he tips up her chin, his dark eyes searching hers. "Detective," he says, the word hitching and soft, and in that moment, she's home, too.

She kisses him, not chastely.

He responds, inviting more.

Details beyond his orbit fade.

* * *

They whittle the day in her bed. _Their_ bed. She learns his body in a way she never had before. Every inch of him. What he likes. What he loves or doesn't. 

Having his earlobe nibbled, or the space between his shoulder blades massaged, not so much. Stroking the inside of his wrist with her thumb, yes. Kissing his sacrum, or running fingers through his hair, _yes_. Sucking his nipples, licking the raphe of his balls, caressing his cock, oh, yes, yes, _yes_. 

He likes to French, but enjoys soft kisses, too. Nuzzling. Rubbing. 

His body is a beautiful, responsive canvas she delights in painting with her lips. Her hands. Her skin, stroking his. 

He explores her similarly, touching her everywhere, touching her always. She orgasms enough to lose count. They talk about everything, and nothing, and they kiss, and they couple, again and again, until every inch of her body is humming, each muscle pleasantly spent. Until time hazes, and she can't stop the stupid, goofy grin that keeps tugging at her lips.

Dinnertime arrives before she thinks to check her phone. A bouquet of excited text messages await—apparently Amenadiel had mentioned to Dan, who'd mentioned to Ella, who'd mentioned to _everybody_ , that Lucifer had returned. 

Ella had sent a single long, _eeeeeeeee!_

Her coworkers, greetings or other welcomes.

Dan, a measured, _I'll see if I can keep her contained 4 a bit but prepare 4 hyper Trix 2morrow_.

Chloe chuckles, replying only to Dan, _Thanks, noted,_ and leaving the rest for later.

The covers rustle. "Should I expect assault by your offspring tomorrow?" Lucifer asks, his tone dry, though his eyes are glinting with humor.

"That okay? I can try to rein her in."

But he shakes his head. "I believe I'll survive."

"Kay." Kissing him, she tosses the phone onto the nightstand. They roll back into bliss while they wait for food delivery.

* * *

Reality catches up in the late evening, after eighteen hours have passed in heartbeats, when she realizes she doesn't know how many hours remain until he leaves again. Doesn't know how long he'll be gone when he goes. 

"The commuting Devil thing you mentioned," she says, bracing herself against the shower wall as he runs a soapy washcloth down her spine. 

"Yes, darling?" he murmurs.

Her hair plasters to her scalp and neck. The water is warm, the steam sweltering, and he's close, so close his skin slips and slides with hers as he reaches around her body to wash her belly. Her breasts. Her throat.

"What's a commuting Devil?" she asks, resisting surrender into pleasant lassitude. 

He stills, water gurgling down the drain. "A … Devil whose job is in another dimension?"

"Yes, but when? How often? How long will your Hell shifts last? A day? A week? A year? What does this entail?" When he doesn't answer immediately, she turns and strokes his chest. He's staring into space, his gaze fixed on the middle distance between the wall and her ear. "Lucifer, when I said I'd take anything with you as long as it's not nothing, I meant it. There's no wrong answer." Just answers that could hurt. A lot. "I just want to know what I've signed up for."

A pause. "I'd … not thought that far ahead yet. I need to discuss with Amena—"

"Knee jerk"—she traces his sternum with her index finger, her skin skipping in fits and starts across the wet expanse—"what would be your answer?"

"I suppose I'd pictured it as a day job."

"So, like … 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, or …?"

"Daily, yes," he confirms. 

Literally, a day job then. Okay. She can handle a daylighting Devil. That's not the best scenario, but it's a zillion miles from the worst. Still, something cold slips behind her sternum. Makes her stomach sink. She considers the last case they'd solved. Nicolette Cade, the inept NIMBY murderess. Despite the compulsion's grisly surrounding context and the world apocalypse-ing around them, resuming their partnership had felt wonderful. And so _right_. 

"What's wrong?" he asks. 

"Do you," she begins, low-pitched and fighting with the sudden hurting lump in her throat, "eventually intend to cut back?" 

"I'd have to see how things proceed before deciding."

Which … not a yes. But not a no either. So, maybe someday. Someday, she'll be solving murders with her partner again. She looks up, blinking against the artificial rain. In the shower's dim light, his eyes seem black like obsidian. Water droplets speckle his cheeks. Slick his hair.

"Is that … all right?" he asks tensely, his tone reedy. The forgotten washcloth lands with a wet slap at their feet as he clasps his fingers over hers, against his chest. "It's not a dealbreaker?"

"No," she tells him, "far from it."

"I cannot abandon what I've made. Chloe, I _can't_."

"Of course not. I wouldn't ask you to. I wouldn't want you to. Not unless you did, too." 

"Then," he says, his grip around her palm tightening like he's terrified of being rejected anyway, "why are you crying?" 

"Oh. Oh, Lucifer, no, I'm happy." She forces herself to smile. "I'm _thrilled_ we have a solution that lets me have you even this much."

"Ah." His ramrod posture eases as he exhales, slow and shaky. 

"I was just wondering if we'll work together again," she clarifies. "I'll miss it. That's all."

He relaxes further, a soft, overwrought chuckle escaping him as he ducks forward to kiss her. "Detective, my earthbound Lux activities are what I intend to sacrifice, not consulting for the LAPD. I didn't mean _literally_ 9 to 5. Even if Amenadiel doesn't help me, what you and I had before, professionally speaking, we'll have it always, if you like."

Relief is a sick wave, unfurling to the tips of her fingers and toes. "Oh, thank Go-uhh-you."

His eyes glint. "An apt save."

She laughs almost manically, sagging against him. He pulls her close, and they huddle under the spray. "Detective, you're shaking," he marvels.

"I would've taken anything you offered, like I said," she murmurs against his skin, "but I really, _really_ wanted to keep working with you."

"So I see." His grin is wan. Wry. "Honestly, I had been planning to discuss it fully with you once I'd chatted with Amenadiel."

But … Lucifer had barely had an opportunity to leave her bed, let alone chat business or logistics with his brother. And then she'd put him on the spot. Made him speculate to ease her desperation.

"Oops," she admits quietly.

Lucifer's gaze is warm. "I think you're entitled to an oops or five, given the current scales."

"I'm not keeping score." She kisses his clavicle. "And, still, I'm sorry."

"As am I," he says, stroking her hair. "For my absences. For hurting you."

She closes her eyes. The water fills her ears with quiet thunder. He strokes her arm. Her back. Two bodies in a hot, close space.

"Detective," he murmurs, "I promise. This is where I desire to be. I will not act unilaterally anymore—not regarding anything that involves you—and whenever I do leave—whenever I _must_ leave—unless you wish me not to, I shall always return. Quickly, I might add, if I've anything to say about it."

"I believe you," she says, breaths hitching.

"Still, I … I'd very much like to show you. With more than words." He kisses her. "No more trembling or crying with unexpected relief that your Devil can actually be taught."

She pulls back to regard him. "That's really not how I meant—"

He presses his thumb to her lips, shushing her. "Yes, I know. But I _do_ mean it."

"Okay, so … what are you suggesting?" 

A pleased, coquettish smile stretches slowly across his face. "Darling, would you like to play a game?"

* * *

Holy shit. Holy _shit_. Hoooly shit. 

She stands before the sink, nothing but a towel wrapped around her damp body. He, in contrast, hasn't even bothered with the ritual of drying off. Water droplets in varying sizes stipple his skin as he leans against the rack, unabashed. His nipples are puckered, his erection an obvious flag of arousal. This conversation _arouses_ him. 

"You," she says, her voice an octave too high before she clears her throat, "want me"—she splays her fingers against her chest—"to put you"—she gestures at his diffuse reflection in the foggy mirror—"in long-term chastity?" 

He closes the gap between them, cupping his water-pruned hands to her shoulders. His erection juts into the small of her back before he takes another step, effectively trapping himself between her spine and his pubic bone. "If you hold my key," he says, "then you know I'll always return to you, yes?"

"I … I _really_ don't need that kind of proof."

"Think of it then as affirmation." A smile twitches at his lips before he kisses the back of her head, lingering. "I do enjoy affirming." 

She imagines him tied spread-eagled to her bed, helpless, aroused, his fantasies unfurling with each careful caress of her fingertips. _I choose you,_ he'd specifically asked her to say, to emphasize. _I love you._ She'd been happy to oblige him with her truth. 

"Chloe," he murmurs as he peers at her in the mirror, "I desire to be your partner, your lover, and your friend: your teammate. Always. But I also desire to be _yours_."

"Lucifer, I swear, you already—" The "are" dies on her tongue, unspoken. The bald, unslaked sexual craving in his gaze invites her like a hearth fire on a frigid night. She clutches the countertop so tightly her tendons hurt as revelation burns. "Oh," she says softly, his fire tugging her into the flame. He wants to be hers. As in _hers_. "You mean, my sub. You want to be my sub. Like … full-time?"

"Yes," he admits, unblinking. "Please, Detective. When it was voluntary, did you not enjoy having me at your mercy?"

Her mouth dries in one swallow. Two. 

Chloe Decker. Dom to the Devil. She thinks again of him sprawled across her bed, his wrists and ankles bound, a gag crammed between his lips. Desire forms a hot whorl of blissful tension—biting ache—between her legs. Below her navel, pressing into her spine.

She never had gotten the chance. To push him into subspace long enough for him to enjoy it. For _her_ to enjoy it. Not really. Not with abandon, anyway. 

Her hand is wandering toward her crotch to rub herself before she realizes—she diverts to the sink, slapping at the edge like a cracked whip. 

Holy hell.

She shifts, clenching and unclenching her thighs with the sudden urge to move. Except that just puts pressure on—

"For how long?" she asks, the words strangled.

"As long as you'll have me."

"No, I …." She turns around, her gaze drifting downward. In Hell, he hadn't been doing any "manscaping" beyond trimming. His happy trail leads not to a heart this time, but a natural "rough" canvas. Like hers. She'd been seeing him naked all damned day, but— 

"Still like what you see?" he asks, preening.

She catches herself mid lick of her lip, offering him a self-deprecating grin before leaning past to grab a towel. She foists it at him. He gets the message, cinching the thick purple cloth around his waist. Without ice, there's no fixing the telltale bump at his groin level, but at least _something_ exists between her and it. 

"Thanks," she says.

"Yes, I know it's difficult to think straight whilst in the presence of divinity." The sparkle in his eyes sells his swaggering _ridiculous_ humor.

She snorts once before breaking into a guffaw, and shoves him gently back into the towel rack. "I love you, but shut up."

"Yes, Detective."

"And what I _meant_ ," she continues, "was how long did you want to be in _chastity_?"

"How long would you like to play?" he asks.

"What are the ground rules for this kind of thing?"

"What do you desire them to be?"

"Can you give me, like, a baseline? What are we even discussing?"

"We are discussing," he drawls, "you having total control over my orgasms for the foreseeable future." He rests his hand at groin-level, cupping himself through the terrycloth. "Control over this." She swallows again. "I come if you think I've earned it, only when you desire. No more, no less."

"But what would _you_ desire?" she asks.

He considers for a moment. "An extension of our previous scene. Tease me. Edge me. Wind me up by having me pleasure you. You decide how long. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Surprise me. Make it _exciting_. Unpredictability is the spice of life."

"You'd seriously be okay with me stringing you along for _months_?" 

"Oh, yes," he assures her, almost an exultation. "Do you not find the prospect scintillating? Knowing the Devil exists for your pleasure, unable to partake in his own without you, without your say? You could try your pegging fantasy, and I would be your willing servant. Does that not entice the budding dom within?" 

The gagged Lucifer in her mind's eye strains against his bonds, sweat pearling on his body. 

"I … I-I, yes. A lot." The words stutter out of her like gunfire. Holy fuck, yes, a lot. "But what's in it for you?"

He cups her face. "Novelty. Anticipation. The pleasure of giving you pleasure, of doing things _you_ enjoy. Perhaps I'd finally teach you not to squelch." 

The bite of arousal—hot and gnawing—makes her skin feel too tight. How can she feel this tight when they'd had sex all day? She—

"Like now," he says, pressing close. "Stop squelching, darling."

Shit, shit, shit, he knew. Of course he knew. "But … we're trying to have a conversation."

He kisses her, his tongue touching hers, exploring. "Sink into it. Your desire. I promise, we'll sate you yet tonight."

"I do still have that gag, you know," she threatens.

His expression turns impish, but he ceases taunting, instead inclining his head and offering a not exactly cowed, "Yes, Detective." 

"Have you even _done_ something like this before?"

"Shagged all day? Of course I have."

"No," she says, trying not to get flustered, "I mean, played a long-term chastity game thing."

"Never in the position of the chastised, but I'm not unfamiliar."

"And … you really want to do it with _me_?"

"More than anything," he replies without hesitation, "if _you_ desire to do it with _me_." He doesn't speak the words like a question, but the inquiry lingers in his gaze. 

_Is_ this what she desires?

There will be no one-sidedness here. No force or pressure. Unlike the actual slavery situation they'd endured, either their joyous consent and enthusiasm will mutually abide, or this will not be. 

_Yes,_ her tiny voice screams. Yes. Yes. 

His suggestion is new and crazy, and she never in her previous life would have thought it'd be her thing—in fact, the former-dom Devil seems to have boarded a similar boat—but with him—with her—it feels right, and … she—he—really wants to explore that. 

Together.

She can empathize.

And she desires.

Like a snarling, roaring fire desires fuel. 

"Same safe word and limits as before?" she asks, shifting into the bargaining phase.

His questioning expression turns delighted. "I'm assuming shagging and snogging are on the table now? Touching you?"

She can't help but laugh, thinking of her bed, already thoroughly debauched and smelling of sex. "What do _you_ think?"

"Best to be explicit, as you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I remember," she says, grinning. " _Obviously,_ shagging and snogging and touching are fine now." Craved, even. "What's your upper limit?"

"On?"

"How long you go without, um, payoff."

"Oh, Detective," he purrs, a lascivious grin crinkling his eyes, too, "I like where your thoughts are headed." He considers before cocking his head. "Truthfully, I've no idea. Perhaps let's start at three months and adjust if necessary?"

Nodding, she kisses him. "What about the cage—isn't everything breakable to you now? Not like I can command you anymore to find plastic impervious."

"All cages are ultimately escapable by truly motivated individuals. Imperviousness is … not at all their point."

"Well, yeah," she replies, stroking his chest, "I just mean … you seemed really pleased before by the idea of total power exchange. How would we replicate that again? _Could_ we replicate that for you?"

"Ah, I see. So considerate. Yes, I've some ideas on that."

"Good," she says, kissing him again. "But … tell me later?"

"Yes, Detective."

"Sex, now."

He laughs, scooping her into his arms. The towels slide off, both his and hers, giving up the ghost to gravity. " _Yes_ , Detective." 

And he carries her back to the bedroom at the speed of flight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting TWO chapters today. Be sure not to miss the next one!


	54. "Forever, silly"

The store is rearranged and remodeled, freshly painted walls and thematic chrome shelving forming a grid perpendicular to the previous one. The air still smells like soap, though, tendrils of lavender and other floral notes curling into her nose as they cross the threshold. The bell over the door rings, resounding.

"Be right out!" calls Mr. Flannery from the back, somewhere behind a black velvet curtain, which before had been threadbare gray. A clanging noise like crashing cymbals follows, proceeded by a dejected "oh, dear." Then, a more cheerful, "But a moment, my lovelies! Small situation!"

"Okay," Chloe says, turning to Lucifer, "what BDSM gear sounds like a broken drum set when it falls?"

"No idea," he replies, peering around. "I see he's finally hired that interior decorator he's always waxed so enthusiastically ab—what?"

She cocks her head. "What, what?" 

"You're grinning like we caught a murderer." He licks his lip, a grin of his own stretching wide. "That excited to lock me up, are you?"

Thrilling frissons chase to her nerve endings. "What can I say? This is the first time we've come here when I haven't felt"—she walks to the closest shelf, which doesn't sport candles anymore, rather a broad selection of lubes, condoms, diaphragms, and spermicide—"totally mortified." Only sort of mortified now. Mini mortified.

"I'll chalk that up to my influence."

"Pretty much." Credit where it's due. She grabs a glow-in-the-dark condom off the rack, inspecting the label. "Though I admit it feels kinda sacrilegious to be here on Sunday morning with Satan."

A laugh barks from him. His gaze drifts toward the ceiling, almost like he's daring God to comment. Of course, God does not. 

"I can't wear those," he says when he looks down. 

She clutches the box. "Not even the extra larges?" 

"The length is fine; the girth is not. They break, and with you involved, I imagine they'd pinch, as well."

Glow-in-the-dark could have been funny—particularly with his brand of humor—but pain isn't the goal. She puts the box back without argument. Oh well.

"Hello, m'dears!" Rian says as he swishes through the curtain, his ginger hair like a lion's mane. "Lucifer Morningstar and the ever lovely Detective Decker!" Her heart flutters—how the hell had Rian remembered her name after months? They'd only met for a few minutes. "When you never returned, I assumed you'd decided bondage is not your boudoir game of choice."

"Quite the opposite, actually," Lucifer says. "We … had other difficulties."

"Resolved now, I see?"

"I hope so," Chloe admits softly. But Hell is explodable. Her lover is Satan. Satan can daylight as God. Who knows what the universe will throw at them next?

"I, too," adds Lucifer, the words world-weary.

Chloe intertwines her fingers with his. 

Rian beams, his eyes bright like polished malachite. "Well, I wish you well, indeed. May Cerridwen smile on yeh in the future."

"Ah, Cerridwen," Lucifer says with faint fondness as he peers into space. Like Cerridwen had been more than an acquaintance, but not for eons, and now lives only in memory. He squeezes Chloe's hand, turning to her. "We could certainly use her luck and inspiration, couldn't we, darling?"

She's not sure who Cerridwen is, but she can guess from context. "Probably, yeah."

"What inspiration are you seeking today, if I may ask?" Rian chimes in.

Lucifer and Chloe exchange a look. Lucifer bows as if to say, _You first, Detective_.

Oh, boy. How to explain.

"We," she says, scrambling for coherency, "were hoping you could fit him for … um. For a custom cage." Rian's eyes widen. Oh, God. "Not a spiked one like …." Her thoughts take a screeching u-turn at the "bitey clam" ring Alastor Blackthorn had worn. "I just mean, you know, a … a chastity thing? One that's comfortable?"

"None of them are _comfortable_ , Detective," interjects Lucifer with a smirk. "Not precisely. I'll always know I'm caged."

Her face heats.

Rian's gaze ticks down to Lucifer's crotch. Lucifer doesn't blush or shift, just … lets the man goggle at the bullseye-like seam not quite hiding his zipper. 

"You want me," Rian says, spluttering as he gesticulates, "to fit a bloody chastity device for the _Devil_?"

"Um"—Chloe fights not to wince—"yes?"

"A _chastity_ device. For the _Devil_."

"Is … that a problem?" 

"Gods, no!" enthuses Rian. "This is career defining! My Sistine Chapel! My—"

"Please," says Lucifer, glowering, "do not characterize touching my fun bits as painting the bloody Sistine Chapel. Please." 

Chloe thinks of _that_ painting. The famous one. On the ceiling. With Man's finger outstretched toward God's. A choked noise catches in her throat. 

"Don't you dare laugh," Lucifer warns, glower intensifying. "I'll be cross."

"You," she teases, "did call it divine last night."

"Bloody hell, I didn't bloody mean it like _that_. Though I cannot object to the idea of being career defining." He winks at Chloe. "I suppose I'm quite the celebrity in this arena."

No kidding.

"May I use you as a reference?" asks Rian, awed. 

"You may," answers Lucifer. 

"Of course, I wouldn't mention you, m'dear." Rian glances at Chloe. "I've the sense you enjoy your privacy."

She does, and she appreciates the consideration.

"So," Chloe says, inching closer as she wraps her arm low around Lucifer's waist, claiming him. Lucifer accepts her touch, sinking into it like he enjoys her possessiveness. "Can you do that for us, please? Fit him? We … really want to play."

"Indeed," adds Lucifer enthusiastically.

The almost squeal that explodes from Rian's throat is only trumped by the rapid clap-clap-clap of his palms. "Yes, absolutely!" He dashes to flip the store's OPEN sign to CLOSED and lock the door. Then he gestures them toward the curtain at the back. "Right this way."

* * *

The space behind the curtain, with its concrete flooring, massive work bench, tools and other equipment—even a small alcove containing a plush sofa, microwave, mini fridge, shag carpet, and scratched coffee table—is clearly meant as a workshop slash break room. Floor to ceiling industrial shelving forms the room's ribcage, but contrary to expectation, the shelves aren't stuffed with boxed inventory. Instead, dozens of items, most of which she doesn't yet recognize beyond copious metal, leather, PVC, and plastic, rest in neat, unpackaged arrays. Custom gear must be a huge chunk of Rian's business, if not his primary means. Who knew there was such demand for individualized fetish wear?

Rian directs Lucifer to a foam mat by the work bench. Chloe perches on the couch, not wanting to get in the way. She glances at the coffee table, where a stack of fetish-oriented magazines rest. Curiosity blooms, but she doesn't reach for the periodicals, instead focusing on Lucifer.

Rian bustles about, grabbing a measuring tape, ruler, pen, notepad, bucket, and nitrile gloves. He stacks most of them on the workbench. The ruler and tape, he drops into a cup full of bluish liquid, submerging them. Then, he reaches for a set of folded privacy screens leaned against the wall by the emergency exit. Lucifer stays Rian's hand. 

"She can look all she likes," Lucifer says. "It's hers, after all. That's the bloody point."

"Right you are," agrees Rian, withdrawing. "Didn't want to assume, though."

Chloe crosses her legs, her body aching again at the thought. Lucifer, hers. How can she be so _needy_ lately? She feels like a budding adolescent who'd happened upon _The Joy of Sex_ in her parents' bookshelf, and after nearly dying of embarrassment, flipped the pages to look at the pictures. _So_ many picture—

"Never too late to discover your kinks," Lucifer says, smiling almost pornographically at her. "I'm simply chuffed you did it with me."

Fuck, he's good at that. Figuring out when her brain's gone south. How does he—

"Hmm?" says Rian, looking between them. But then he seems to catch the subtext and adds jovially, "Oh, yes, this one"—he points to Lucifer—"does tend to reveal new horizons, doesn't he? I was a bloody car salesman until about six years ago."

Chloe's mouth falls open a little. "You mean … you two?" She gestures vaguely between them.

Rian laughs. "Goodness, no. I don't swing that way, m'dear. But he's been quite the muse, inspiring me with my Janey. Definitely helped spice things up!"

"Wait, is _that_ why you owe Lucifer a favor? Not the Harley dealership thing?" 

Rian smiles enigmatically but doesn't answer, instead turning to Lucifer. "I don't suppose you want a piercing as well? I can—" 

"No," interrupts Lucifer, "thank you."

"Why a piercing?" asks Chloe.

Rian gestures at Lucifer. "If you'll drop your pants, please?" He turns to Chloe as Lucifer unbuckles his belt. "A piercing can secure a cage, making it unremovable without tearing skin."

"Um," Chloe says, trying not to shudder at the thought of tearing _anything_. "Definitely no."

"Yes, contrary to stereotype, I'm very much not into pain, Rian," adds Lucifer. "Particularly not _my_ pain."

"Not to worry," assures Rian without judgment. "Not to worry." 

Lucifer's pants pool at his ankles. Rian snaps on nitrile gloves Chloe usually only sees at crime scenes and in Ella's lab. Then he fishes the measuring tape from the blue liquid, shaking it off. 

"First," he says, "we'll measure the circumference, then the length, and a few other things, and Bob's your uncle." He lifts the hem of Lucifer's white shirt, his former glee evaporating, replaced by discerning but clinical consideration. "I can certainly see why you need something custom. Are you a grower or a shower?" 

"What's the bucket for?" Chloe asks before Lucifer can preen too obnoxiously.

"In case we've a need for ice to coax things in," says Rian, "or hot packs to coax things out. Not that either seems to be a problem yet today. So what did you have in mind for this lovely specimen?"

"A … cock cage?" says Chloe. Hadn't she said that?

"Yes, but what kind specifically?"

Oh. "Not the Kali's teeth. The other one."

"I've several designs, not just two." Rian points to the stack of magazines on the coffee table. "My catalogue should be in there somewhere."

Shuffling through the pile, she finds a color portfolio thicker than her thumb, each page covered in glossy photographs. A cornucopia of penis-oriented fetish gear. More than cock cages, too. There're rings, weights, harnesses, things called crushers or stretchers or bits with sharp—holy shit, holy shit. 

"Some of that's for pain play," cautions Lucifer.

"Yeah, I," she says, "I gathered." She flips quickly back to the benign parts of the cock-cage section. Dozens of different choices sprawl at her fingertips, all sporting Rian Flannery's familiar inscription where possible. Some cages are made of rings held together by scant parallel pieces of frame. They form small banana shapes, and don't have thick enough material to inscribe. She laughs. "This is like shopping for a wedding ring."

"Well, you said it, m'dear, not me," Rian agrees affably.

Annnd Lucifer is staring at her again—not nervous, not shy, not shying away. 

Holy shit. 

Nerves flutter in her belly. 

She scans the pages. Some of these devices are more like metal diapers than cages. Which … no. She prefers … discreet. Cages that aren't cumbersome and don't hide their contents. Despite Lucifer's extreme glee whenever he catches her, she enjoys looking at him. At appropriate times, anyway. In appropriate places.

She pauses on a cage that seems almost as decorative as it is functional, intricate swirls of filigree sprawling down the length. The material doesn't seem bulky or excessive—easy to hide behind clothing when they're not actively playing, which … would hopefully prevent questions at work. Hopefully. If she can contain Lucifer from crowing about it. 

_So command him to shut up about it_ , her tiny voice decides. _Punish him with more chastity if he doesn't._

Speaking of inappropriate times and places—she takes a breath. And another. Jesus. 

"Penny for your thoughts?" Lucifer prods, sounding entirely too amused, and she can't lock him up soon enough. Really, she cannot.

Rolling her eyes, she holds up the catalogue, pointing to the picture of the cage with the filigrees. "What do you think of this one?" 

"Is it what you desire?" 

"I'm asking you."

"May I touch you now?" asks Rian.

"May he, Detective?" Lucifer says, his words a silken purr.

"Yes, do it," she grits out quickly, prompting another obnoxious smirk from Lucifer. 

As Rian reaches down with the measuring tape, she shifts, the denim of her jeans snarling across the canvas couch. Reflexively clenching her thighs—squelching?—unfortunately activates her pelvic floor, too, and that … feels good. Really good. Particularly with the current view, as Rian wraps the tape underneath Lucifer's balls. Lucifer stares at her, his eyes dark and desirous, like he knows. 

He _knows_. 

Of course he knows. 

He's known this whole time what she's thinking. He's not Lucifer the Lightbringer. He's Lucifer the fucking Mindreader. Fuck. 

The catalogue crinkles as she grips the pages too tightly.

"Um," says Rian, not looking up, "whatever you're doing, m'dears, I recommend changing gears, or we'll definitely need the ice."

Fuuuck. Chloe flops back against the couch, briefly squeezing her eyes shut. "You know"—she latches onto her first thought that isn't sex, sex, sex—"the Sistine Chapel is really nice, but the painting with man reaching for God is a lot smaller than I expected. You almost need binoculars."

"Another reason," Lucifer says, "it's a very poor comparison to _me_."

"I'm not letting you out for weeks when we finally get this thing made," she grumbles.

"Oh, yes, punish me. Please, Detective."

"Can we please think about awful stuff? Like … murder? Or kicking puppies?"

"Please do," quips Rian. He jots something down, then changes from tape to ruler, pressing the 0" marker directly against Lucifer's pubic bone. He aligns the ruler perpendicularly with Lucifer's torso, his shoulder blades shifting under his shirt as he adjusts his grip.

"The chapel's really crowded, too," Chloe blurts, looking away again before she can see the exact number Lucifer stretches to when he's flaccid. Shit, shit, shit. "Kind of a letdown."

"Indeed," says Lucifer, the word wry. 

Except hearing his voice dunks her back into fantasy. Lucifer, naked, caged, tied to her bed, his hair mussed from sex. Sex with _her_. 

God, damn it.

"All done," Rian announces, straightening as he tosses the ruler back into the blue liquid with the tape measure. "Just in time, too, it would seem." Heartbeat by heartbeat, Lucifer's arousal is flooding in. The gloves snap as Rian removes them. He scribbles down his remaining measurements. Lucifer bends to pick up his pants, his erection bobbing with him.

Chloe averts her gaze, staring with laser precision at the wall calendar by Rian's head. The February picture is a tasteful bouquet of red riding crops, a reference to Valentine's Day roses. 

"How long will this take to make?" she asks.

"Which cage did you select?" Rian says.

Chloe holds up the catalogue to the relevant page, providing a visual aid.

"I'd say"—Rian squints at the ceiling, thinking—"about six to eight weeks, depending."

Six to eight weeks. She fights not to look disappointed, though her emotions must show on her face, because Rian adds, "I'm afraid I can't make it any quicker than that, m'dears. Particularly the one you've selected, since I utilize another craftsman to make the filigrees."

"What about a simpler one?" Lucifer asks. He gestures at the picture next to Chloe's choice. "Same concept, no filigree? Would you find that acceptable, darling?"

"Sure, why not." If going simpler means they get something now, she's in favor, if only to erase that perpetual knowing smirk from Lucifer's face. 

But Rian says, "Still four to six weeks, I'm afraid, since I have to order the materials."

"What if I bring them to you now?" Lucifer asks, grimacing as he zips his pants. "I've a special metal I desire you to use. You can't obtain it here." Here, Chloe realizes, as in Earth. Is _that_ his idea to enforce power exchange? Making his fetish equipment with Hell-forged metal? "I can bring materials enough both to construct the simpler cage immediately and send away for the filigree. You can make the cage the Detective desires at your leisure."

Rian opens his mouth. Closes it.

"I'd pay you extra to justify the rush, of course," Lucifer continues. "Is that an option you'd consider?"

"No pressure," Chloe feels the need to add, reining him in. "We can totally wait, _just like everyone else_."

"Yes, absolutely, the choice is yours," says Lucifer, his expression calculating, "but I'm willing to offer proportional inducements in the hopes, Rian, you'll desire to work quickly and _immediately_." His words are like warm quicksand, dragging even Chloe down into dark velvet depths. She shivers, more frissons of arousal zapping through her body.

"Well," Rian says, "Janey's expect—wait, how much _extra_ are we discussing? What _inducements_?"

"Enough to spend as much time with Janey as you desire. I'd also consider the favor you owe me expunged."

Rian's breaths become funny wheezes as he ponders the possibilities. 

"Yes," Lucifer prods, his eyes gleaming with imminent victory, "a favor no longer owed, a career-defining cock cage for the Devil himself—two, even—an effusive celebrity reference for your future business ventures, should you choose to continue with them after you become filthy rich, and piles enough of cold hard cash that you could swim in them like Scrooge McDuck. An opportunity of a lifetime or more. What say you, Rian Aden Flannery? Will you do this?"

"I could have it for you by tomorrow evening if I don't go home," Rian says, almost vibrating, his excitement manifesting in tremors and frenetic agitation. He pulls his fingers through his red mane, again, again. "I think Janey would understand this once."

"Excellent," Lucifer says. "Will you give me a list of your needs? Specifications?"

Binders line the back wall of the workbench. Rian reaches with a muscled arm across the space, his fingers deftly exploring. He picks a binder in the middle, handing it to Lucifer. 

"Page sixty-two and … sixty-four." Rian licks his lips like he'd just swirled a heady sip of aged wine on his tongue. "The materials lists and parts numbers are at the tops of the pages."

"Perfect," says Lucifer, clutching the binder. "Hold that thought."

And then he's gone in a blink, the briefest gleam of divine white wings and the telltale flutter of feathers preceding his departure. Rian slumps onto the stool beside the workbench, his eyes wide, his body shaking.

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. No cock cage is worth traumatizing the poor guy. "Okay," Chloe says, rushing off the couch to pat his shoulder reassuringly, "I know this is a shock, but—"

"Oh, don't worry, m'dear. I knew already."

She blinks.

"Sometimes, I get sucked in, is all." He shakes his head, taking a noisy breath and blowing it out, sending red curls flying. "That angel has such a beguiling _presence_ , you know? I can bloody understand where all the Christian mythos came from, even if it's bollocks."

"You … _know_?"

"Well, it's not as though he doesn't tell everyone immediately."

Huh. Touché.

Rian rubs his eyes and rolls his neck. 

"Wait," she says, "how can you be Pagan when you know the Devil is really real?"

"You'll note he didn't laugh off Cerridwen as fake."

True. Wonder seeps in. 

"I like to think there's room for everyone," Rian muses. "Maybe we humans have the majority wrong, but … some of it is right, and the real deal seems not to care who we put our faith in. Why not follow our hearts and enjoy what speaks to us as individuals?"

"That's," she says, "a really nice way to look at it." 

He smiles, his face turning ruddy. 

Lucifer returns minutes later with a bagged bundle that clinks and clanks. "As soon as I've gotten with Simon—probably this week, assuming he hasn't gone on another blasted pony trek—I'll have him wire you your just rewards, my good sir. You've my word."

Rian leaves the burlap bag on the workbench. "Anything else I can help you find?" he asks cheerfully as they return to the front.

Chloe's about to say no when she notices a particular end display. Strap-on harnesses. 

"Those are on sale!" Rian says when he catches her staring. "Fifteen percent off!" 

As if the universe had aligned specifically for her today. 

She wanders closer, reading the boxes, her formerly snuffed desire burgeoning again. "For comfort and simplicity, I recommend the one on the top right," Lucifer murmurs by her ear, apparently stalking behind her. "No reason we can't play tonight after the offspring has gone to bed."

Anticipation floods the space between her ribs, filling her to bursting. She grabs the item he recommends. "Now what?" 

With infectious glee, he steers her into the dildo aisle.

* * *

The drive back with bags and boxes is quiet, full of furtive, smiling, not so secret glances. Full of reaching, relished touching, petting, tactile loving. 

"How come you didn't just poof the cage we want into existence while you were grabbing the Hell-forged metal?" Chloe asks when question occurs to her at a stoplight. "Why bother with Rian?"

Lucifer shrugs, smiling mischievously as he strokes her fingers, their hands clasped. "Tell me, _where_ is the anticipation in that?" 

But that doesn't seem like the whole truth. "Lucifer … did you _want_ an excuse to pay him?" 

His grin widens. "Perhaps."

"Why, what'd he do?"

"He helped us get here, did he not? There's enough kink in your boot to impress even Mazikeen."

She laughs. "Good point."

Before Dan arrives with Trixie, she and Lucifer have just enough time to hide their purchases away, stuffing the packaging underneath her bed for later perusal and application.

The front door bangs against the stopper. "Lucifer!" Trixie yells as she darts across the threshold.

Lucifer grunts when she collides with him, wrapping her spindly arms around his too thin waist. He gives her head a gentle but awkward pat, saying, "Yes, hello, child." A pause. "I'm glad to see you've not judged me as harshly as last time."

Last time. When Trixie had hidden in her room instead of jumping on him. 

"Nah," replies Trixie. "Mom explained."

"Yeah," adds Chloe, "we had a long sit-down after you left this time."

Trixie's head bobs an affirmative. "With pizza and cake and everything!"

"As a _family_ ," Dan says, shuffling inside.

"Something we should have done the first time," Chloe admits, "but didn't." Because she'd been caught in a depressed fog, not thinking straight. This time, though, she'd had closure. Preparation. Things that, combined, had made all the difference in the aftermath. 

"I see," says Lucifer, though from the furrow in his brow, he doesn't. Not really. But that's okay. 

"Are you back?" Trixie asks hopefully. "Like back, back?"

Dan folds his arms as they gather in the living room, adding, "Yeah, what's the story, man?"

"Amenadiel didn't explain?" wonders Lucifer.

Dan shrugs, pushing up his sunglasses to rub his eyes. "Just the broad strokes. That your place—"

"The one in England!" Trixie chirps. 

"Yeah, in _England_ ," continues Dan with a wry-ish expression, "was fixed, and he'd convinced you to come home. But that's it."

"Home," Lucifer echoes in a flat tone, "but that's it." 

"Yeah, man. That's what he said."

Lucifer glances from Dan to Chloe to Trixie and back again. And again. And then he laughs, a bubble of pleasure effervescing like fizz from a rootbeer float. 

"What's funny?" asks Trixie.

"Nothing at all," he says, his smile a sunrise tugging at his lips—glimmers at first, then wide, bright, beautiful. His eyes film with moisture. 

"You okay?" Chloe asks.

"Yes," Lucifer says, like he's tickled simply to be saying the word. Yes. "Go home, he said, and here I am. Home. With all of you." He jabs a thumb at Dan. "Even my curmudgeonly almost in-law who wants nothing to do with me but tolerates me nonetheless."

"That's," says Dan, bristling like he's ready to protest, only to slump, "fair."

Lucifer waves him off and looks down. "And you, child"—Trixie scrunches her nose, peering up at him with exaggerated, contorted confusion—"my lover's offspring, who I will never in bloody eternity understand, and yet … here you are, always, with your flagrant disregard for my personal space, and your joyous enthusiasm." He laughs again, the sound a symphony of varied emotion. _"_ Enthusiasm. For _me_." 

"Is that bad?" Trixie asks. "What's flagrant?" 

Another bark of laughter. "You are, you incomprehensible little barnacle." For the first time Chloe can remember, his arms snake around Trixie, clamping closed like he's a hungry Venus flytrap. "Yes, child, I am back, back, I hope. For as long as you'll have me. All of you." 

_As long as you'll have me_ , he'd said yesterday, and Chloe realizes she'd never answered the unspoken question. 

She opens her mouth to reply, but Trixie beats her to it with an irreverent, "Forever, silly. Duh!" 

Lucifer's gaze wanders to Dan, who holds up his hands, fingers splayed, and grumbles, "I don't think I get a vote."

Lucifer laughs again. "How very tolerant in-law of you to say. Speaking of which, I owe you and Ms. Lopez a Q and A. Do let me know when works for you, and I shall be happy to answer your burning questions." 

"Maybe, this week?" Dan says, looking actually excited at the prospect. "Lemme see when Ella's free."

"Excellent. You do that, Daniel."

Lucifer's attention shifts to Chloe. Warmth funnels through her as their eyes meet. "Yeah, I'm sorry," she says softly, "I thought the forever part was obvious." She forgets, sometimes, in many respects, he's brand new. 

"Careful, darling," he cautions. "Forever means quite a long time for me."

She strides to him, cups one hand to the back of Trixie's head, and wraps her other arm around his waist. "I know that now. Remember?"

"That you do," he murmurs, and he laughs again. Like … _whodathunk_? Except in considerably more British vernacular.

Her life, it seems, has found a new strange normal on many different levels. But in this case? Strange is good. Whodathunk, indeed. She rests her head against his shoulder, and Lucifer's Venus-flytrap maneuver adjusts to incorporate her as well, a rare moment of unhindered, devilish affection. Dan, meanwhile, mimes and mouths, _I'll call you later,_ behind Lucifer's back. _Happy for you_. Then quietly slips out the door.

They huddle until Trixie gets antsy. "I'm gonna read," she announces, pulling away.

Lucifer watches her go, and Chloe fills the new gap. "I meant it, you know. Forever's what I want, if that's what you're willing to give." 

"Yes, Detective," he says, and pulls her closer, and clings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Profuse thanks to those who take the time to leave comments or kudos. I really appreciate you! And a big virtual hug to my lurkers, too :)


	55. "worse ways to die"

Time passes. Days into weeks. Weeks into months.

Lucifer arrives about fifteen minutes after she prays. He pops into the parking garage in a now familiar flurry of feathers, just as she's hitting the unlock button on her key fob. 

"Detective," he says, grinning as he climbs into the passenger seat beside her, his weight making the car wobble, "glad I could catch you before you left."

Thursdays are his one full Hell day—time he always sets aside, even if it's Amenadiel's week—and dawn to dusk, he's gone. Today, though, her dashboard clock reads 1:42 p.m. "I'm surprised you made it at all," she says. 

"Is that a problem?" he asks.

She twists the key in the ignition and smiles at him as the car rumbles to life. "Exact opposite; I promise. Though, seriously, you need to stop poofing into the precinct like this. You're gonna give someone a stroke when you finally get caught, and you _will_ get caught. It's inevitable."

"But—"

She reaches across the car to squeeze his bicep. "I would appreciate it if you were more judicious."

His protest dies, unspoken. "If you insist," he says, staring at her hand like she's offered him ambrosia. "Detective."

"I do. Thanks."

He sucks in a ragged breath as she pulls away. USPS had delivered an important package over a month before. He'd seen it. Watched her open it, and then hide the contents, unused. She'd wanted to save it as his part of his "reward." 

She's been attempting unpredictability, sometimes rewarding him multiple times a night, or on consecutive nights, sometimes frustrating him with drought for days or weeks. Despite him never leaving her unsatisfied, she thinks she craves his release as much as he does, if only to watch him dissolve into the throes. He makes the whole affair so euphoric. Ecstatic. Addictive. This seven weeks, so far, is the longest she's managed to tease him before _she's_ popped. 

"Did something happen today?" she asks, backing the cruiser out of her assigned parking spot.

"Hmm?" 

"Did something happen in Hell?"

His midnight-blue suit is rumpled, his pocket square wrinkled and tilted. As he gathers his wits, his lips part, luscious and kissable. God, she loves how she can discombobulate him with just a touch these days. That cage is _amazing_.

He scrubs at his face, blinking to focus before he says, "Yes, I … I"—another blink—"had a bit of a situation with a parolee. I returned him to Dr. Fawkes for an extended time out."

"Is everyone okay?"

"Rattled but fine. Major benefit of everybody being dead. Murder's off the table."

She shakes her head, exiting the garage and pulling into traffic. Life had taken such a bizarre turn, that he can say stuff like this and now she thinks it's normal. Logical, even. 

"Speaking of murder," Lucifer continues, "what's this you prayed to me? A dead plastic surgeon, is it?"

"Yeah," Chloe replies. "New case in Los Feliz. Dr. Arthur Arthur." 

A pause. "Darling, are you stuttering?"

"Nope. His name is really Arthur Arthur."

"Who gives their child the same bloody name twice?"

She shrugs. "The Arthurs, apparently. Body was found this morning, shot."

"Suicide?"

"No."

"I suppose you could say his busts have boomed," Lucifer deadpans, staring out the window at passing cars.

She rolls her eyes as she zips through a yellow light, but … who is she kidding? Mirth tugs at her lips. She loves the terrible puns, too.

* * *

Dr. Arthur Arthur had worked in a two-story complex, the "hallways" between suites actually wide walkways outside the building. A balmy breeze billows through as Chloe and Lucifer climb the steps to the second floor. The office in question had been bright, airy, and lushly carpeted. Which, unfortunately, left a lot of surfaces to catch blood spray. Tony Rawlings, the newest forensics tech, stands at the edge of the mess, his feet wrapped with plastic bloodstained booties, as he takes photographs. Sharp flashes pierce the gore-soaked visual din at uneven intervals while Ella takes notes. Uniforms bustle about. 

Leaning across the threshold, Lucifer stretches the crime scene tape. Ella looks up, first at the warping tape and then him. "Hey, guys!" Her dark eyes twinkle through her protective goggles. She waves a blue-gloved hand. "Chlo. Luce. This is pretty ick, huh."

"Hello, Ms. Lopez," he says, regarding the splatter underfoot. "Ick, indeed. Goodness, did this body explode?" Not much above the body's waist is left in one piece. He glances at Chloe. "Perhaps his bust _did_ boom?" 

"We're trying to figure out the physics involved," Ella says, "but this definitely wasn't explosives, only shotgu— _don't_ "—she stabs her pen in their direction, Lucifer yanking his hand away from the yellow tape as if it were a hot iron—"cross my threshold yet."

Lucifer gives her a sheepish look.

"Got anything interesting for us?" Chloe asks.

"Still working on it," says Ella. "Sorry."

"No problem. We should probably interview witnesses then."

"Of course, Detective," Lucifer agrees.

"Have you ever considered interviewing the deceased in Hell?" asks Ella. "Not to be victim blame-y. I just mean, like, if he went there. Which I'm not assuming. But it seems like it would be a super quick way to catch killers. Like, hey, Doc Arthur, any hints about who shot ya?"

"That's," Chloe says, "not exactly gonna hold up in court. They'd call it hearsay."

"Is it hearsay when it's straight from the mouth of the deceased?" Ella asks, frowning.

"It is when the 'Devil' has to testify on their behalf," Dan says wryly as he trots up behind them. "Hey, guys." He's carrying a wrinkled steno pad, scribbled over with nearly illegible cursive. "I've already interviewed everybody in two-oh-two." Doctor Arthur Arthur's office suite is 203. "Multiple witnesses heard shotgun blasts."

"That would certainly coincide with Dr. Hamburger Helper," decides Lucifer, gesturing at the macabre mess.

"Murder aside, he seems popular," continues Dan. "Couldn't get any leads. Nobody hates the guy."

"Seriously," says Ella, "why don't you just ask in Hell?"

Lucifer sniffs. "Ms. Lopez, assuming he even went there, now that time in purgatory passes like Earth time, he won't be in a fit state to answer questions for months. Perhaps, if this case remains unsolved, but—"

"Ohhh," says Ella. "Right. The de-gloving thing is shocking."

"Precisely." Lucifer gives the hem of his waistcoat a gentle tug to straighten it. "Rae-Rae can barely convince people they've died—sussing out reasons for their predicament isn't in her repertoire. She finds it morose enough as it is." 

"Makes sense."

"Seriously," murmurs Tony, staring wide-eyed over his camera. Chloe realizes the sharp flash, flash, flashes have ceased. "Just like _Supernatural_."

"It is _not_ ," snipes Lucifer. 

"Didn't we tell you?" Dan jokes to Tony. "We're writing a spec script together."

"I bet y'all could get the writers to look at it, easy," Tony says, "what with Detective Decker's film connections. Wow, that's so exciting!"

"I beg to differ," Lucifer huffs. "That show can't even keep track of its own canon for fifteen bloody seasons. My rules have been consistent for a millennium or more."

Ella's eyes narrow. "Didn't Amenadiel just change Hell time a few months—"

" _Besides_ that!"

"We ought to have a marathon sometime," says Tony. "Your notes must be fascinating."

"That's what I keep _saying_ ," Ella replies.

"No," says Lucifer. "Watching it once was quite enough."

"Pretty please?"

"I'd buy the popcorn," Dan offers.

"No," repeats Lucifer.

"Maybe, we could ease into it with another Buffy watch?" Ella asks. "You liked Buffy."

 _"No_ ," says Lucifer. He cocks his head. "I mean, yes, I did enjoy Buffy, but—"

"Can we please focus on the murder?" interjects Chloe, though she can't muster any bite. 

Dan, Tony, and Ella all grumble various iterations of, "Sorry," and, "You're right." 

Lucifer folds his arms and preens at Chloe's "support." 

A _Supernatural_ marathon actually does sound fun, given the current context of Chloe's life. Maze and Lucifer's contrasting commentary on demons had made Buffy a blast. Maybe Chloe can make _Supernatural_ enticing. She's definitely in the power position for offering motivation. An unplanned Dominus trip? Time out of his cage? Both? But. That's not for now.

"We should see if anybody in two-oh-four saw something," Chloe decides.

"Yes," agrees Lucifer. "Let's."

"Okay," says Ella. "We'll be here."

* * *

They spend the remainder of the afternoon interviewing the traumatized witnesses in suite 204. Lucifer stays until 4:30. "Detective, I've an appointment with Dr. Linda. She had to reschedule my usual."

"I remember," Chloe says. "Go." 

He's careful to duck out of sight before he flies away. She concludes the remaining interviews alone, but the story is the same from person to person. Most witnesses had heard gunshots, but none saw anything. More baffling, nobody could muster a harsh word against poor Dr. Arthur, let alone conjecture on suspects.

A mystery is afoot.

Too bad her dear Watson's done for the day.

Her personal phone buzzes as she's headed back to the car. 

_Have you tried this one yet?_ a text from Kyle says, followed by a link to GoodVibes. _My sub loooved it._

She and Lucifer had bumped into Kyle again when they'd returned to Dominus. Phone numbers had been exchanged. She re-pockets her phone, saving that for later. Kyle, once they open up, can be as dirty-mouthed and chatty as Lucifer. Chloe's glad to have a friend in the community, though. Google can't answer everything, and they're fun company to boot.

Chloe drives home from Dr. Arthur's office complex. Lucifer isn't there when she arrives at 6. He'd been seeing Linda three times a week. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Far more often than before his enslavement. 

He'd become better at handling triggers. Even when he's startled, he doesn't usually snap anymore. He still has nights wracked with memories he never wanted. Night terrors. Not often, though. 

Some damage seems permanent. 

He doesn't like anyone coming up behind him without warning, doesn't like being touched unexpectedly. Sensory deprivation—blindfolds, in particular—remains a hard limit when they're playing—he must be able to see what's going on, or he gets panicky. He _hates_ being asked to show his wings—that's their most recent discovery. Just the request had made him "yellow." When she'd tried to pet his feathers, he'd gone "red" faster than a bullet. Despite Chloe withdrawing immediately, he'd had a panic attack severe enough to warrant calling Linda.

Not ideal. But they navigate it, and they learn. Together.

 _I think I was_ , he'd admitted several weeks prior, in a session he'd asked Chloe to attend, _punishing myself by staying in Hell_. _I … I think I was._

 _You're not punishing yourself now, are you?_ she'd asked afterward, insecurity gnawing her heart with a bitter bite. _When we play?_

 _Darling,_ he'd said, shutting her down with a kiss, his lips tasting of the butterscotch candy he'd stolen from Linda's stash, _I'm jubilant when we play—the precise opposite of punishment, yes?_

She hadn't been able to argue.

 _It's affirming,_ he'd continued. _You empower me, not enslave me. And, as I've said, I enjoy affirming._

The front door opens as she's watching the evening news. "I've returned," he calls, the crinkle of plastic almost drowning him out. "Apologies for the delay—thought I'd pick up dinner. The child is with Daniel tonight, yes?"

"Yeah." She glances at the corner, two perpendicular walls jutting to block the entryway from view. There's a rustling noise, and the clink of a belt buckle hitting a hard surface. "What'd you get?"

"French."

"There's a French restaurant around here?"

"No, I went to France." 

"Isn't it after midnight there?"

"After 3, actually, but the chef owed me a favor."

Before she can reply, he rounds the corner, the simpler first-iteration cock cage made by Rian Flannery his only adornment. Gleaming Hell-forged metal catches the light, bobbing as Lucifer steps in front of the coffee table. He sets down cardboard tubs full of steaming food, smiles, and backs away. Her insides coil like spooled kite string as she stares at him, inhaling the scent of fresh-baked feta-stuffed chicken and vegetables.

"What do you desire tonight?" he asks, the words husky and weighted. "Shall I feed you, Detective?"

"Color?" 

"Quite green."

She flicks the remote button, the television winking off. In the lamp's soft glow, his body is beautiful, lean and lithe and healing. As delicious as the food smells, it can't compete with him to capture her attention. 

"Move the coffee table," she tells him. 

"Yes, Detective."

He shoves it aside, his biceps and quads bunching, before returning to where the table had been. He folds his arms behind his body, giving her an ample, unobstructed view. She can't tear her eyes away.

"On your knees," she says.

He drops to the area rug in front of her, scooting close, but not touching. She reaches for him, rubbing his chest. His skin is warm, his excited breaths buffeting her in the quiet. She pets him, teasing his nipples before wandering lower, cupping him. His balls, tucked tight against his cock by a metal ring, are soft beneath the gentle stroke of her thumb. A groan loiters in his throat. His hips thrust, the cage jutting into her palm like he wants to rut with her hand.

"No," she says, holding him, and he stills. "Not yet."

"Yes, Detective."

"This is mine now." She squeezes. Not enough to hurt—a reminder. His lips part, and he stares, caught in the rapture of her touch. "You don't move if I don't give you permission, yeah?"

"Yes, Detective. Sorry, Detective."

With her free hand, she pulls her bullet necklace loose from underneath her collar. A metal key hangs behind the bullet, framing it. "You want me to use this tonight, don't you?" she asks, stroking the key.

"Yes, Detective."

"You're getting desperate. You'd beg me, if I let you beg."

" _Yes_ , Detective."

Making him beg's not her thing, though. "Color?"

"Green."

"Kiss me."

"Yes, Detective." He rises onto his knees, leaning toward—

"Not here," she murmurs when he's millimeters from her mouth, her hand still wrapped around him. She releases the cage and key, gesturing downward with both index fingers. "There."

A smile quivers at his lips. "Yes, Detective." He drops to fiddle with the button of her jeans. Her zipper snarls. He tugs her pants and panties to mid-thigh, and then away. She spreads her legs, hooking them over his shoulders. When he puts his mouth on her, she arches back against the couch cushions, gasping.

"Oh," she encourages, her fingers grabbing at his hair, guiding him closer, holding him where she wants him. "Oh, yes. Right there."

Her vision fills with sparks. Galaxies. The Lightbringer at work. Her thighs shiver. He toils to abandon, her body his next shooting star.

"Good Devil," she assures him. "Good, good Devil." 

And he delights.

But she doesn't free him from the cage.

In the end, he's wracked with ragged panting, his skin flushed dusky red with arousal. The cage grips him cruelly, constricting him, not allowing an erection. He lowers his hands to the metal once, forgetting, but she bats him away. 

"That's mine," she tells him. "Not yours, remember?"

Swallowing repeatedly, he finds his words, "… Yes, Detective."

"Did I give you permission to pet yourself?"

"… No, Detective."

"Color?"

At first, he doesn't speak.

"Color?" she prompts again.

He gives himself a shake. "Green, Detective."

He must ache with frustration. With arousal and desire. Meanwhile she's sated, her muscles relaxed, her body warm in a good way. Her empathy burns, though. 

"Would you like me to let you orgasm tonight?" she says.

"Yes, Detective." Need strips his words bald. He stares like she's the sun, and he's her Earth, basking in her rays, destined joyously to revolve around her until he dies. 

She debates giving in. But this is what he wanted. Teasing. Novelty. Unpredictability. _Excitement_. Things that, in his long life, he mustn't experience often anymore. 

She gazes into his eyes and kisses him. Pulls her fingers through his hair. Cuddles with him.

"You're such a good Devil," she tells him, and he preens, almost climbing into her lap as he sprawls across the couch for her. "Do you like this?" 

"Yes, Detective," he purrs, a big blissed-out cat. "Very much."

She leans over him, kissing him again, laving him with affection. "I love you," she says, stroking his face. His body. Everywhere but the cage. "I choose you."

His happy place.

He beams. 

And then, gently, she nudges him. "Why don't you reheat dinner for us? Don't put your clothes on, though. I like the view."

He seems too buoyant from affection and praise to be disappointed by his lack of release. With a soft grunt, he rolls away, righting himself, shaking his head like he's still discombobulated. The appropriate, "Yes, Detective," never arrives, but that's okay.

She smiles, watching the Devil—naked, drunk to dysfunction on oxytocin—try to figure out her microwave.

* * *

Friday is a slow day as they wait for lab results. Chloe spends the morning filling out an endless parade of paperwork. Lucifer is in Hell, as he spends most red-tape days.

"Hey, Chloe," Amenadiel says, walking up to her desk around lunchtime, "have you seen Dan?"

"Oh, yeah," she replies, gesturing with her pen. "He's in the conference room, working on one of Myers's cases." 

"Did you want to grab lunch with us?"

"No, thanks. Lots of busywork to do."

Amenadiel turns to leave. He looks good. Relaxed. Flourishing. He'd been spending time with Linda. Dan. Not much with Chloe—she'd hardly talked to him since Lucifer had returned. Not that that's bad. They'd never been more than passing acquaintances connected through Lucifer.

"Hey," she calls, and Amenadiel stops in his tracks. Peers over his shoulder. "Thanks for"—she takes a breath—"thanks for giving Lucifer the kick in the pants he needed. He gets stuck in these spirals sometimes, and …." A lump forms in her throat. Amenadiel had saved far more than Lucifer. "Thank you. I mean it."

"You're welcome," Amenadiel replies. "Be happy. Both of you."

"We will. You too, okay?"

"Already done."

He beams, handsome and whole. And then he slips away, dodging around an intern carrying a box.

* * *

"Yes!" exults Ella. "Cheers!" 

"Cheers!" they echo—Maze, Chloe, and Linda—followed by the clink of four sloshing glasses crashing into each other. 

Chloe sips her strawberry daiquiri until a cold spear plunges into her sinuses, offsetting the pleasant heat of her buzz. Tearing, she squeezes her eyes shut, slapping the table again and again as she tries to ride it out. 

"Whoa," Ella says, laughing, "careful there!" 

Lights swirl. Bass throbs. Bodies writhe. The piano at the center of Lux sits empty, and instead of Lucifer, besuited and debonaire as he mingles and laughs with his guests, a man-bunned tattooed Patrick-the-former-bartender fills the host role. But the Tribe still receives VIP treatment and free drinks, so when they want happy hour, here is where they gather. 

"Uck," Chloe protests as she smacks her glass onto their hightop, "how'can a daiquiri hurt worse than a bullet to the shoulder? I don' get it."

"You wouldn't have this problem if you drank real liquor," Maze says, sipping her scotch.

"This is totally real. There's rum in this." It's also not her first drink. Or her second. Or … her third. Is this her third? 

"It's a thing with nerves at the roof of your mouth," says Ella. 

"Drinkin' rum?" 

"No, brain freezes. Press your tongue against your palate for a sec."

"Oh." Chloe does. The pain recedes. "Huh. Neat."

"Who the hell says 'neat?'" Maze asks.

"Clearly," says Ella, "drunk Decker does!"

"Serrisly though, ladiesz," Linda chimes in, clutching her mojito, "thanks for coming out tonight. S'been a really rough year. For _all_ of us."

"I've been fine," interjects Maze.

Linda grins, ruddy-faced and happy. _Happy_. "Either way, s'really nice to hang with m'girls." 

This is the first Tribe night Linda's organized since before Lucifer's _first_ departure. She'd improved in leaps and bounds since Thanksgiving. Not having to wonder anymore about Amenadiel's fate had helped. Analise cleaning—Lucifer's biweekly gift—and everyone else circling the wagons to aid with Charlie had helped, too. Like Lucifer, Linda still struggled sometimes, but … much less.

"I'm glad you're better," Chloe says.

"Me, too," Linda agrees.

"I'll drink to that," Ella adds, holding up her beer bottle again.

"I'll drink to anything," says Maze. Her gaze softens. "But it's awesome you're fixed now."

Linda smiles. "Thanks, ladiesz."

Another chorus of, "Cheers!" rounds the table, followed by another rapid-fire clink-clink-clink.

"It feels really weird Lucifer's not here when he's, y'know, _here_ ," Ella says, staring at the piano.

"End of an era, f'shure," decides Linda.

Though he lives in the penthouse above, Lucifer, true to his word, hasn't resumed managing Lux on Earth. He plays occasional sets when whimsy strikes, but that's it. 

"Kinda hard to wrap my brain around Lux in Hell with souls as patrons," muses Ella. 

"Probably cuz you're drunk," says Maze.

"That's … very true." Ella puts her beer down, grabbing at Maze's leather sleeve. "We should dance more. Dancing's fun." Ella doesn't wait for Maze to reply before stumbling off her chair. "I'm gonna."

"Wanna dance again, Linda?" Maze asks as Ella weaves into the writhing crowd.

"Oh, no," Linda says, running her index finger around the edge of her glass. "I'm done."

"Decker?"

"The room is … spinny," Chloe says. Her face feels molten hot. Sweat drips into her cleavage. "I'd prolly trip."

"Suit yourself." Maze shrugs. Turns. "Hey, Ellen, wait up!"

As Maze stomps away, Chloe sips her daiquiri, ice bits, rum, and strawberry pulp bursting onto her tongue. "Also, I've got a question, and I'm too embraced. Brassed. I'm too … I mean, I can't ask when they're here. Ella would never shut up, and Maze. Oh, my God, Maze."

Linda laughs. "What is it?"

"You were a phone sex operator, right?" Chloe asks.

"I was, yes. Why?"

"Kay." Chloe slams the rest of her daiquiri, another brain freeze locking up her thoughts, before she can think better of asking things that are totally TMI. She doesn't do the tongue-on-the-palate thing, instead suffering. Crying. Suffering and crying keeps her from wanting to melt into the floor with mortification. "Know anythin' about givin' blowjobs? I kinda wanna surprise … someone."

"Lucifer?"

" _Someone_." Chloe grimaces as the freeze keeps freezing. "And. Yeah. I dunno; I've always gagged."

Silence stretches. Linda sips her mojito, squinting.

"Sorry," Chloe rushes to say. "Stupid question. Stupid, stupid. Never—"

"No, no," Linda says, holding up her hand. "This is a safe space. And I do actually have rev … rev. Revelant experience on thisubjeck. I'm jus' … kinda tips … tisipsy, also."

Chloe grins. "Really?"

"Veeery tispy, yes."

"No, I mean …." 

They share a look, only to break into uncontrolled laughter. Ella and Maze, in the crush of the crowd, dirty dance just like Swayze and Grey—Chloe can't figure which one is supposed to be Swayze. 

"I carried a watermelon," mumbles Chloe, sniggering. 

Linda follows her gaze, adding in a deep voice, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

"We should watch that! Why haven' we?"

"Totally next on the liss of suggessions," Linda says, fumbling for her phone. "If I can find … was that …?" She pauses, her lips twisting and brow furrowing. "Huh. Wait, what were we talking about?"

Chloe snorts. "Good blowjobs. Movies with Patrick Swayze."

"Oh, right, right." Linda pantomimes pulling something over her hair.

"Whatcha doing?" asks Chloe.

"Donning my Dr. Feelgood cap."

Another shared laugh.

"So," Linda says, taking a breath, "the most 'portant thing to remember about a BJ is … the biggess bess most sensitive nerve endings are in the head of the penis. You don' need to be doing anything that makes you gag, and he'll still have a great time. Trust me; I'm a doctor with a very small mouth cuz I'm a very small person."

They stare at each other. Linda's flush spreads, deepens. She starts to shake. Chloe's chest aches as hilarity burgeons, filling her lungs to the brim. They burst out laughing simultaneously.

Being drunk is sometimes fantastic.

* * *

The next day, well after she's slept off the hangover, he's sitting at his piano, playing something jazzy when she steps off the elevator. He cranes his head, peering over his left shoulder. "Detective," he says, the music ceasing with a dissonant tumble of bass notes. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I know." She clutches her purse, the box inside weighing down the straps. "Wanted to surprise you if you weren't busy."

His gaze is warm. "Success, and … no. Never too busy for you." He glides to his bar, now fully stocked with top-shelf liquor and crystal glasses. His black robe, cinched at the waist, gleams in the soft light. "May I pour you a drink?"

"Oh, no, thanks." She takes a step, exploring with her eyes. The penthouse décor and layout is almost the same as it used to be. Leather sofas and chairs ring a glass coffee table. His massive book collection stuffs his shelves from end to end. Familiar knickknacks have returned. The glossy black piano at the room's center, though, warms her heart the most. He'd had his stuff back for weeks, now, liberated from the bowels of whatever storage Simon had hidden it in, but the piano had lagged for polishing and tuning. 

She approaches the keyboard and plinks a few notes, a buoyant feeling burgeoning when she notices something new. Across the long hood. Sitting on his writing desk. A small frame—just one—that hadn't been there before. It houses a picture he'd taken ages ago as she'd stared into space, thinking. Her favorite picture. 

"When did you get that printed?" she asks.

"I didn't," he says, pouring himself scotch. "I was thinking about it earlier—thinking of you—and there it popped, into my hand like I'd always been holding it." 

"You made it here?"

The amber-colored liquid in his glass sloshes as he lifts it to take a sip. "No, darling," he replies, swallowing. "I still can't seem to Create when I'm away from Hell. But I didn't want demons seeing a photograph of you sitting on my desk, so I brought it home."

Instead of smiting it to slag.

Maybe he _is_ secretly sentimental. Ducking away to hide her smile, she walks a slow circuit around his piano, her heels thumping against polished Italian marble.

They have a lot to figure out regarding his powers. She thinks, maybe, he's like an adolescent God. Powering up as he ages. Lucifer refuses to entertain that idea. She gets the impression his near omnipotence scares him. It scares her too when she thinks too hard about it—the scope, breadth, what it could mean. 

"Did you come to judge the status of my unpacking," he asks, lips quirking into a wry grin, "or have you something else in mind?" 

She stops, smiling sheepishly. "Sorry, no, I'm here to see _you_ , not your stuff."

"Oh, are you?" His leer makes her roll her eyes.

"I meant _furniture,_ not"—she gestures below his silk sash—"that."

"So, you did come to see it?"

"No, I came to see _you,_ Lucifer, which, yeah, includes that, but—"

"No shame, darling," he interjects. "It's yours, after all." 

"I'm not shamed." Not anymore. "Just saying you're the part that matters to me. I wanna spend time with _you_."

Now, it's his turn to look flustered. 

"But seriously," she continues, "I just—I'm so happy you have your home back. It feels like … like …." 

"Real, now?" he suggests quietly. 

"Not exactly." She rubs her eyes when they prickle unexpectedly. "More like, maybe, we're somewhere close to normal again?"

"With considerable improvements, yes." He steps behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her ear. "Though I _am_ gratified you've begun to think of this as normal."

"It really helps that you're just so"—she searches for a word—"so _you_ about it." 

"Devilish?"

"No, gleeful."

He laughs.

Her purse threatens to slide off her shoulder, but she halts its descent before the strap catches the crook of her elbow. She turns in his arms, clutching her bag with one hand as she rises onto her tiptoes to kiss him. "Color?"

"Green," he says without hesitation. "Downstairs?"

Her gaze slides to the flight of steps leading to the lower floor of his penthouse. He'd outfitted a room with a bondage bench, Saint Andrew's Cross, and other equipment. Copious toys, too—many she hasn't tried yet. But … the dungeon isn't her plan for tonight. "No," she says, kissing his jawline. "Bed."

"Hmm." The sound is deep and rumbling in his throat. "Detective, what _did_ you have in mind?"

"It's Saturday, and Dan has Trixie until Sunday night. I have _all_ evening to play with you." 

She drags her fingers across his chest, sashaying away and into the bedroom. He kicks back his tumbler, polishing off the rest of his scotch with a gulp, then sets his empty glass on the piano hood. 

"Lock the elevator, yeah?" she calls over her shoulder.

Another addition. New, at her behest. 

"Yes, Detective." And he does as she asks, following quickly after.

* * *

The night is a feast of affirmation. For him. For her. 

She offers no hint she'll give him release, instead winding him to greater and greater heights of sexual frustration. He gives her orgasm after orgasm, with his hands, with his mouth, with a vibrator he bought for her. They cuddle, and they couple—she makes him don a strap-on over the cage. 

"Yes, Detective," he still says with gusto, loving her—fucking her—without complaint. 

When she needs a break, they talk, speculating about the case, catching each other up on time they spent apart, or just gabbing, while she pets him through his prison. The rumble of his voice through his sternum pleases her. Soothes her. She could spend forever listening to him, holding him, being held, even as he loses coherency, panting, searching, as his state of arousal peaks and isn't allowed to relax.

For hours, she keeps him trapped on that pinnacle. Into the darkest part of the Los Angeles night. 

When she asks him to lie on his back—to restrain him—his, "Yes, Detective," is fraught with tension, like he's trying and failing not to show how close he is to pleading with her.

She crouches over him—naked, too—as she secures the final ankle tie. "Color?" 

"G-green," he answers, panting, his nipples tight pinpoints with arousal.

She kisses him. "You wanna know what I'm gonna do to you?"

"Yes, Detective. Please, Detective."

She still hasn't informed him of her purse contents. He lies spread eagled across gold-sateen sheets, held in place by leather restraints. Loops at his ankles, wrists, and knees assure he can't close his legs or protect himself. The collar he'd chosen months ago secures his throat, holding him down. He'd tempered the leather in Hell with an injection of Will, and he cannot break it, much like Hell-forged metal smelted from angel feathers, demon blood, and terrestrial ore. 

On his back, all his soft parts exposed, he's helpless. Even if he were to withdraw consent, his life would still rely on her to acquiesce, but his expression holds nothing but trust. Excitement. Love. Lust.

Something "analogous in mechanics" but "antonymic in tenor" to his trauma. What he desires. What he _needs_. Reclaiming his pleasure. 

She wants to give him a good night.

So, so good.

Revelatory.

Like he's given her, time and time again. 

She kneels on the mattress between his legs. The cage remains, enclosing his cock and balls. The metal shines, lambent and strange. Not of this earth. 

She fingers the necklace encircling her throat. Fondles the key, resting in her cleavage with the bullet. His muscles clench, and the restraints creak but hold. She opens the clasp, letting the bullet and key fall into her waiting palm. 

"You really want out, don't you?" she asks.

"Please, Detective."

The cage—the original Rian Flannery had made—is a series of rings held together by a curving, simple frame to form a banana-shaped cylinder. A Hell-forged lock the size of her thumbnail holds shut the cock ring looped under his balls. He bucks, the lock clinking metal against metal as he moves.

"You better hold still," she chides, "or we won't do this."

He quiets. 

She lets him wait an agonizing three minutes before unlocking him, relishing the resonating, echoing sound of the tumblers disengaging. He sighs, his chest heaving as she tugs the cage away from his skin and sets it aside. She kisses the inside of his knee. His thigh. Strokes his leg. His body shudders.

"Excited?" she asks him.

"Yes, Detective."

Gently, she fondles him, and his ribcage expands sharply again. She's let him out before. Watched him masturbate without finish. Allowed him to "shag" her, again without finish. Given the history, given all the work she's asked him to do tonight, he probably thinks release is a pipe dream. She won't disabuse him of that notion. Not yet.

"Color?" she prompts.

"Green."

She hopes this is good for him.

She wants to make this good.

She drops low and kisses him, licks him like a lollipop. The head. The corona. The "biggest best most sensitive nerve endings." He arches backward beautifully against the pillow, straining, gasping at the sudden slick heat. 

"Oh," he says on the coattails of a sharp inhalation, breaking the rules—he's not supposed to speak, or by extension, demand. "Oh, Detective."

But she'll give him a pass this once. "Do you like that?" she asks, grinning. 

"Yes, Detective. _Oh_."

Score one for Chloe Decker. "Don't come. You don't have permission."

"Yes, Detective. I promise."

She takes him into her mouth—not too far—tasting him. Loving him. Her body feels warm, her brain a little bit spinning despite no alcohol. He's spent over seven weeks giving her everything she's asked of him. He's never balked, never complained, only committed with jubilant verve, and she wants to return the favor. Give him what he's asked for. His fantasy, realized with her. _Her_. His Detective. 

She's his—his dom—as much as he's hers—her sub.

Deprived as he is, only minutes pass before every muscle in his body seems to contract at once. "I'll come," he warns her. "I'm going to—"

She licks along the underside of his length and lifts away, leaving him untouched, abandoned.

A sound like stifled screaming rakes his throat. His fingers clench and unclench, his breaths chopping.

"Do you like that?" she murmurs again.

"Yes," he croaks. Barely. "Yes, Detective."

"You'd be happy if we stopped here."

"… Yes." Not a lie.

"Yes, what?"

"Detective."

He's scattered. Desperate. Dying inside. For her. 

She kisses his kneecap before sliding off the bed. She'd left her bag on his reading chair. She wanders out of view, leaving him staring at the ceiling, erect, panting. The teeth of her purse's zipper separate, filling the quiet.

"Remember what I got in the mail a while ago?" she asks. 

"Yes, Detective."

"What did I get?"

He coughs roughly. "The cock cage. From Rian. With the filigrees. The one you liked. Detective."

She pulls the shipping box from her bag, making a show of severing the tape along the seams with her fingernail. "I brought it with me," she says. "Would you like me to put it on you tonight?"

He stares blankly at the ceiling. Like … this isn't real. This isn't happening. He wants his release. He _wants_ it. He'll fall apart if he's denied one more time. But then he squeezes his eyes shut. Gathers himself. He's Lucifer bloody Morningstar, and he has the bloody stamina for this.

Smiling, she opens the packaging. The device is beautiful, crafted with loving, meticulous care, the filigrees making it more like jewelry than a cage. But it will still function as intended. She holds it above his face so he can look at it as she pets the metal. 

"Would you like me to put this on you tonight?" she repeats.

"Yes, Detective."

"You'd thank me for it."

"Yes, Detective."

"You'd give me another orgasm in gratitude."

"Yes, Detective."

She sets the cage on the nightstand, by his ear. With his neck restrained, he can't easily turn his head. He should only see the unearthly metal's gleam in the corner of his eye. She sits beside him, stroking his body slowly from collarbone to groin. 

"Do you like when I touch you?" she asks.

"Yes, Detective."

"What about when I kiss you?"

"Yes, Detective."

She leans down, pressing her lips to his, pushing fingers into his hair and clenching her fists against his scalp. "I can do anything I want, and you can't stop me."

"Yes, Detective."

"Know what I want?"

"… Me?"

"Me, what?"

"D-Detective."

She kisses his lips again. His throat. His chest. His shivering, hitching belly. 

"Yes," she says. "Yes, I want you. So much."

She traces a long, meandering line down his body, taking her time, kissing him again, again. His nipples. His navel. The carefully curated but wiry fuzz that forms his happy trail and plunges like an arrow to his groin. The salt of his sweat lingers on her tongue. 

"Don't come," she warns him, and she takes him into her mouth again. 

She "tortures" him.

Devotes time to his lower body until he threatens to burst, and then shifts back to his lips, his face, his beautiful brown eyes. She likes to stare into them while he gazes back in a smitten haze of adoration. This man. This angel. Her morning star. 

"I love you," she murmurs, over and over. "I choose you." The words seem to renew him. "You're such a good Devil."

Once he's cooled enough to tolerate more teasing, she wanders south again. And north. And south. And north. A dizzying ping-pong game of pleasure across his body. Until, she hopes, he feels so loved he's buzzing inside, his nerves alight like candles.

The last time she heads south, she stays there, kissing and sucking and licking.

"I'll come," he nearly whines. "Detective, I'll come."

She doesn't move, dedicating careful, slow attention to every inch of exposed skin.

"I can't … I can't … Detective, I'll—" The bed groans as he yanks on his restraints. His body shudders. Strains. "Please. Please, Detective, I'll come if you don't stop. I'll—"

She kisses the head, lifting her face long enough to peer along his heaving frame and tell him, "Come; you have permission," before enveloping him again. 

When she sucks, he gasps and convulses, spurting into her mouth. She drinks him down, caressing every drop from him, until his jaw slackens, and with a sigh he sinks into the mattress, no longer grasping, or pulling, or anything. She kisses him before sliding north to curl against him, resting her head on his shoulder as she repeats, "You're such a good Devil. You're so good for me, and I love you."

His drunk, sated sigh makes her feel warm inside. 

"Was that good?" she asks, not caring if it's role breaking. He blinks sluggishly as she pushes her fingers through his hair. "Lucifer?"

"Hmm."

"Color?"

When his answer doesn't arrive, a grin pulls at her lips, unstoppable, aching in its intensity. 

"You're totally blitzed, aren't you?" she asks cheerfully.

His blank but euphoric expression seals it for her.

"Never mind," she whispers, pressing close. "You just chill, if you want. I'm here."

"Yes … 'tective," he mumbles. 

Finally. _Finally,_ she's hit that note for him. The note that starts the symphony. A giddy but almost inaudible squeal ejects from her lips before she can stop it.

She undoes his restraints, folding them neatly away, into the box he keeps in his master closet. The new cock cage, she leaves on the nightstand for when he sobers up. Not now. She exits the bedroom, but only long enough to grab a chilled water bottle from his kitchen downstairs. 

"Let's move you to the chair for a minute," she tells him when she returns, helping him sit up. 

"Yes, Det …." He doesn't finish the word, instead dropping into an unintelligible mumble.

His maneuvering is languid, relaxed, his expression spaced like someone sky high on THC. He drops into his reading chair as commanded, relaxing.

"Sip this," she says, foisting the water at him.

"Yes, Deck…ivv." 

He takes the bottle, nursing the drink, staring into distant galaxies while she wraps a blanket over his shoulders, and then strips and changes the bed. 

She fills his giant bathtub with his favorite epsom salts and her favorite bubbles. Steam fogs the massive mirrors. Leaves condensation on the marble. He sinks into the tub, naked and spent, and she readily sinks with him, her body humming in all the right places. Once they're clean and they've soaked, she herds him back to the bedroom.

Purple skies, and the distant lights of downtown Los Angeles fill his darkened penthouse with an almost spectral glow. She curls beside him, pulling up the soft sheets and down comforter. His body is warm, his heartbeat pounding through his chest as she rests her ear against his sternum.

"G'night, Lucifer," she tells him, kissing him.

"Yes, Detective," he hums back, entranced.

She'd helped him stop.

She'd done that for him again.

Finally.

Smiling like a lovesick dope, she holds his hand until he falls asleep.

* * *

She wakes slowly, the sun, hot on her face, deciding for her when she'll rejoin the world. She opens her eyes to the black blur of his sheer curtains, several feet beyond the bed. He strokes her arm, the motion soft and rhythmic, his breaths warm against her neck. Though she'd started as the big spoon, she'd become the little one overnight.

"Morning," she says, smiling. She grabs his hand, pulling him toward her mouth to kiss him. "You still a space cadet?"

"No. Only … pleasantly numb."

He doesn't sound disappointed. Just blissed. Like subspace, but less … spacey. 

"Thank you," he adds. "Thank you, I … needed that."

"You're welcome."

She rolls to face him. The sunlight turns his eyes a rich, autumn brown, like leaves about to fall. Nothing pinches his face—not worry, not stress. His hair, mussed and curling over his forehead, frames his carefree smile, making him seem young.

"I'm surprised you've not put the new cage on me," he says. "Don't you want to use it?"

"Figured maybe you should be conscious for that, yeah?"

"Hmm." With a lazy grin, he tips onto his back, propping his knees up as twin peaks under the sheets. He spreads his legs wide. "Whenever you're ready, Detective."

"You're sure? Already?" 

"Oh, yes. Please, Detective." 

The sated, sleepy cat look he gives her through his dark eyelashes makes her ache. He doesn't even have morning wood, if the lack of weight poking her spine when she'd woken had been any indication. He's just … quietly rapturous. She cups his face, peering into his eyes as she pets the ridge of his right cheek.

"What is it?" he says, looking up at her, the warmth in his expression enough to stoke fires.

"Nothing. Just. I love you." 

"And I you," he replies easily now, after they've been through so much. 

Rubbing her eyes, she sits up, pulling the sheets down before grabbing the shiny new cock cage and lock off the nightstand. "How long, this time?" she asks as she pulls it on, looping the ring under his balls, making sure everything is secure. The metal is cold; his hot skin burns in contrast. "Three months max again?"

"I think I might bloody die if you actually go three months. Seven weeks was …." 

"Hard?"

"Not for me, as you know," he offers, deadpan. 

"Sorry," she says, sniggering as she bends to kiss him through his cage. "Not sorry."

"Exquisite," he decides, watching her, "is a more appropriate word." Folding his arms behind his head, he spraws lazily. "You're quite good at this, you know. Are you certain you've no prior experience domming?"

"Nope," she says. "Only Google"—Linda, Kyle, horniness—"and an intense desire to overachieve."

"How very type A, indeed."

She grins as she pushes the lock closed. "So … maybe, two months, max?"

"Oh, no." He shakes his head fervently. "No, no. Keep it three. Surprise me again. Please."

"But you just said—"

"There are," he interrupts, rolling over with her. She laughs as the world flips around, and suddenly he's straddling her. "Far worse ways to die." 

The cage glints in the shadow of his groin. She focuses on his face. "You're sure?" 

"What a silly question," he murmurs, kissing her, his eyes bright with the new morning. "I'm free, Detective. You did that."

"I think you did a bit more than me," she says. He had rewritten Hell, after all. 

"Hmm. Well." He grins. "Either way, it's a bloody delightful place to be, yes? Free?"

Yes. Oh, yes. With him in particular. 

His smile stretches wider. "So, let's revel, shall we? Three months. Perhaps I'll build some stamina."

"I don't doubt _that_."

"Practice makes perfect." 

Still, she's not sure _she's_ ready to plunge into another long tease. Maybe, she'll let him out next weekend for as many orgasms as he wants. "I think I just want an evening with my Devil unleashed."

"Darling, whatever you desire." He kisses her. Again. Again. 

"You wouldn't be disappointed?"

"What a silly question," he repeats, a murmur against her ear. His hand parts her legs. Cups her. His touch sends hot frissons to the tips of her toes. "Would you like to unleash me _now_?"

"Yeah," she says without thinking. "I mean, no."

"No?"

She gives him an apologetic look. "Make me breakfast instead? I'm freaking exhausted."

His responding laugh is warm and bright, his delight laving her like last night's bubble bath. He kisses her, a parting peck on the lips. "Yes, Detective."

As he pulls away, she decides, "Stay naked." 

He snickers. "Yes, Detective." 

"What? I really do like the view." _Really_.

He's still laughing as he walks languorously from the room, careful to give her a show from all angles. 

_~finis~_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thousand heartfelt thanks to everybody for reading! Thank you especially for all the kudos and lovely comments. You've been a wonderful audience, and I've enjoyed sharing this story with you very much—what a long, crazy ride this has been! If you've been saving up on feedback, this is officially your last chance for this piece. I still have lots of Lucific ideas, to include a potential sequel for this story, sooo I'm pretty sure you'll see me again! Until next time :)
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